Badlands High

Badlands National Park won’t make you wait for the spectacle at its west entrance. The first bison grazed a few hundred feet from the park gate. In other words, these badlands started treating us good almost immediately. 

From Rapid City, it’s an essential day trip to travel down the plains to Badlands. From 50 miles away, the Black Hills form a hazy, blue horizon. The winds push around most cars. In the park, the wind howls even harder. Wind made the small farm ponds look larger as the waters rippled harshly. 

By one farm, a lone black cat strode inside the fence, a lonely sentinel in the fields as the wind gusted and churned waters on every ranch pond in its path. In random spots some pronghorns still grazed as the day fought for every degree but stayed in the 30s. In the park, wildlife ran much thicker. 

The bison were plentiful across the high plains of the park. Little red dogs – code-word for baby bison – have not yet been born. They will arrive soon, when spring reaches the South Dakota plains. For now, the massive adults grazed in side of the rock formations and with the Black Hills framing them. 

While the wildlife remains a strong draw, the works of wind and water have scraped away the rolling prairie to expose the rock artistry beneath. 

Down Sage Creek Rim Road, which leads off to the park’s south unit, the road follows a dirt path that winds along the lip of the rock formations. The rows of crumbling and serrated rock roll for miles. Trees grow in some of the wider gullies formed between them. But trees quickly grow rare. These badlands formed along the White River and a number of small creeks that fed into it. 

After a wet winter, the creeks had visible flow, and standing water and ponds were visible along the Badlands Loop. The banks looked muddy no matter where we encountered the river. 

At the Pinnacles Overlook, nearly a dozen bighorn sheep either lounged out of the wind or grazed. There were no males, just a few groups of females. The whole time I walked the path to the lower overlook, a dozen sets of eyes were upon me. 

The Badlands Loop Road is another National Park Service engineering marvel that follows the contours of the Badlands and gives visitors views from above the formations, winds within them, turns below them, then climbs out to the rolling prairie immediately north. 

If the park seems like a work in progress, the erosion goes onward. A handful of optimistic fools attempted to homestead around the Badlands, but eventually abandoned the claims in the treeless, arid region. 

But these lands were Native hunting grounds for generations, as the Badlands offer slot canyons for cornering bison and many potential buffalo jumps where warriors could lure them into running to their deaths. Springtime adds a colorful sheen to the Badlands, as winter snowmelt brightens the colors in the rocks. 

The weather changed quickly, moving from full sun to overcast, and the rocks seemed to change accordingly. The few trees the road passed seemed dead, a function of spring arriving late on the Northern Plains. The badlands offer a conundrum North lies flatland, south lies flatter land. But the transition between the two is staggeringly beautiful. 

While erosion has changed the landscape, its biologic diversity has remained strong throughout many ages of animals. In the interior of the Badlands, its ancient history comes to the fore. 

 A boardwalk illustrates the animals that lived in Badlands since the Age of the Dinosaurs, including alligators (smaller than modern alligators), camels, turtles, horses (smaller than today’s miniature ponies, and early felines. 

Last came the mighty Titanotheres, a personal favorite ever since I encountered its horned face in a children’s book on early mammals. While resembling a rhino, Titanotheres is closer related to horses and went extinct 34 million years ago. There are fossils yet to be uncovered in these rocks, as erosion will continue to reveal the distant past below the plains. 

The Ben Reifel Visitor Center (named for a former Congressman, the first of Sioux ancestry) and the park lodge feel like they arrived too soon. The park had breezed by, even if it shouldn’t have. At that point, the drive is still surrounded by Badlands, but there’s a knowledge these grand formations will come to an end. But once you leave, they will continue their long, slow erosion.