Badlands Wilderness

About 38 million years ago, the Badlands Wilderness was a marshy jungle teeming with saber-toothed cats, small camels, giant turtles, and other long-extinct creatures. Their bones were buried in mud washed down from the Black Hills and beneath layers of gray and white volcanic ash. Over time the jungle transformed into grassland, and eons of wind, rain, and frost sculpted the landscape into a moonscape of cliffs, gorges, mesas, soaring spires, sharp ridges, and fossil-rich canyons. With an erosion rate of one inch per year, the Badlands are constantly changing. To the Dakota, this area was known as Mako Sica, meaning "bad lands to travel through." Before the park was established in 1939, early pioneers hurriedly filled their wagons with fossils as they migrated westward. Today, backpacking opportunities abound, offering unrestricted camping in this little-used Wilderness, where no established trails exist. This area represents the largest mixed-grass prairie wildland in the United States, home to deer, rattlesnakes, coyotes, bighorn sheep, and a large herd of buffalo.