South Dakota

Badlands National Park - There are eroded mudstone spires and gullies which are beautiful to see but deceivingly lifeless. The formations are actually rich with fossils of a time when mammals began to dominate the earth after the dinosaurs had died. Much of the badlands is the finest prairie in America. Reintroduced bison and bighorns browse here, along with the mule deer, pronghorns, and prairie dogs that survived the influx of homesteaders a century ago.

Here you will find the largest mixed grass prarie left in the United States. There aref 244,000 acres of sharply eroded buttes, pinnacles and spires blended with the

Here you will also find the black-footed ferret, the most endangered land mammal in North America which was actually reintroduced into the Badlands where it finds protection.

Here, also, you will find human history that dates back over 11,000 years and fossil beds dating 23 to 35 million years ago.

Here you can learn the evolutionary reserach of mammals such as horses, sheep, rhinoceros and pigs.

Established as Badlands National Monument in 1939, the area was redesignated "National Park" in 1978.

National Park Weather

05/09	05/10	05/11	05/12	05/13
Rain	Chance Rain	Partly Cloudy	Chance Thunderstorms	Chance Thunderstorms
High: 58°F Low: 41°F	High: 50°F Low: 30°F	High: 66°F Low: 41°F	High: 69°F Low: 42°F	High: 63°F Low: 39°F

More Information

• Offical Website
• PDF map of Badlands