Badlands National Park

There’s an area of southwestern South Dakota that the Lakota called mako sica and early French trappers referred to it as les mauvaises terres a traverser: both mean “bad lands”.  First established as a national monument in 1939, Badlands National Park received its national park status in 1978 and encompasses some 244,000 acres. The park is known for its rugged, eroded area of buttes, saw-tooth divides, and gullies as well as being a place of extremes. The summers can be extremely hot (it was 102 degrees when I was there) and the winters bitterly cold.

Some 75 million years ago the Great Plains were covered by a shallow sea that stretched from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico. In today’s Badlands Nation Park, the bottom of that ancient sea appears as a gray-black sedimentary rock called Pierre shale. This sedimentary layer is rich with fossils of sea life including ancient fish, giant marine lizards called mosasaurs, and enormous sea turtles. As the continental plates collided creating the Rocky Mountains, the land uplifted and the ancient sea drained leaving behind a dense subtropical rainforest. Eventually the climate cooled and the forests dried up leaving behind the grasslands we think of the Great Plains as today.

For the past 500,000 years, erosion caused by water and wind have been at work carving away the soft sedimentary rock at Badlands National Park. The dramatic bands of colors we see in the rock formations is the result of different sedimentary layers from different periods in geological history. Badlands is still being carved by erosion today where some 1 inch is lost annually to rainfall with some scientist saying it will all be gone in 300,000 to 500,000 years.

The Badlands are rich in an array of fossils from extinct animals that roamed this area some 23 to 25 million years ago. It was a time after the dinosaurs when mammals were evolving and roaming the subtropical forests after the retreat of the inland sea and later when the land became a vast grassland. Fossil remains of animals like the leptomeryx (small deer-like creature), mesohippus (ancestor of the modern horse), or archaeotherium (distant relative of the pig) have all been discovered in the park by scientists and visitors! In fact, the Ben Reifel Visitor Center (named after the first congressman of Sioux decent) is dedicated to the fossil history of the park and also has a fossil processing lab located within.

Badlands National Park has an approximately 30-mile paved scenic loop road that winds its way through the park and the jagged rock formations. There are numerous turnouts and overlooks along the way which offer breathtaking views of the dramatic landscape carved by erosion. Many of these overlooks have trailheads associated with them that allow visitors to get out into the formations for a closer view. Both the Door and Window Trails give you spectacular views of the eastern side of the park and they are both short which is good during the brutal summer heat. My favorite hike was the Notches Trail which is popular with visitors due to the 50-foot ladder that you have to use in order to scale up the face of a cliff. At the end of that trail is a panoramic view of the White River Valley and the grasslands.

Many animals call Badlands National Park their home including bison and prairie dogs. I only found a single herd of bison well out of the park on the national grasslands area. However, prairie dogs are abundant in the park with numerous towns seen all throughout. Everywhere you hike there are “beware of rattlesnake” signs. Those signs aren’t lying because when I was up at the Conata Basin Overlook I had a three-foot western diamond back rattlesnake slither out right from beneath the boardwalk I was standing on snapping photos. In 1979 scientists believed that the black-footed ferret had become extinct with the death of the last known captive ferret. However, in 1981 a group of wild black-footed ferrets was discovered living in Wyoming but their numbers fell to only 18 by the mid-80s. In a controversial move, US Fish and Wildlife intervened by removing the last known black-footed ferrets from the wild and putting them into breading programs. After a successful breeding program, black-footed ferrets were re-introduced to Badlands National Park in 1994 and scientist are hopeful for the recovery of one of the planet’s rarest mammals.

Minuteman Missile National Historic Site

Along I-90 not too far from the entrance to Badlands National Park is Minuteman Missile National Historic Site. During the height of the Cold War, the bulk of the United States’ nuclear deterrence was buried beneath the surface of the Great Plains. The park sits at the old site of the US Air Force’s 66^th Missile Squadron which would have been responsible for the maintenance, security, and ultimately launch of 50 Minuteman II intercontinental ballistic missiles each eighty times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. There would have been two officers or missileers locked in a launch control vault thirty feet below the surface 356/24/7 waiting for the command to launch their ten missiles. The historic site has a great visitor center where you can learn more about the Cold War and the men and women who stood watch. They offer guided tours of the Delta-01 Launch Control Facility which allows guests to go underground to see the where the crews manned their posts, but I didn’t have a reservation which are hard to get in the summer months. Instead, I was treated to a ranger talk at the Visitor Center given by a former Air Force officer who worked in the underground launch control facility. You can also drive fifteen miles west of the Visitor Center to the Delta-09 launch site where you can look down at a decommissioned Minuteman II missile in its silo.

Wall Drug

In 1931, Ted and Dorothy Hustead used a $3,000 inheritance to purchase the only drug store in Wall, South Dakota. The business struggled in the early years and so Dorothy came up with the idea of placing roadside signs along the highway offering free ice water to passing motorists hoping they stop by and purchase some other items. This simple, yet brilliant, idea created the most popular roadside attraction in the United States attracting some two million visitors annually. Today, Wall Drug still offers thirsty visitors free ice water as well as a full restaurant, ice cream parlor, gift shops, tourist attractions, art galleries, and a chapel.