48 Fun Facts About Badlands National Park

Which carved memorial, finished in 1941, lies about 60 miles west of gateway town Wall?

Mount Rushmore, carved by Gutzon Borglum between 1927 and 1941, drew a stream of motorists past Wall toward the Black Hills; the Crazy Horse Memorial nearby was only begun in 1948.

Besides eroded buttes and pinnacles, the park protects the largest undisturbed example of what in the US?

Mixed-grass prairie covers most of the park, a transition zone between the wetter tallgrass prairie to the east and the shortgrass plains of the west, with grasses from ankle- to waist-high.

Which South Dakota city, the state's second largest, is the nearest major city to the park?

Rapid City, about an hour's drive west along Interstate 90, is the gateway to both the park and the Black Hills and has the region's main airport.

The park's South Unit is co-managed by the Park Service and which tribe?

The Oglala Lakota, whose Pine Ridge Reservation contains the South Unit, have co-managed it with the Park Service under a 1976 agreement; the tribe has long sought to run it as a tribal national park.

Which president signed the 1929 law authorising Badlands National Monument on his final day in office?

Calvin Coolidge signed the act on 4 March 1929, his last day in office; its conditions, including a state-built highway and land purchases, took a decade, and Franklin Roosevelt proclaimed the monument in January 1939.

In which year was Badlands redesignated from a national monument to a national park?

In 1978 Congress redesignated the monument a national park, a decade after a 1968 act had more than doubled its area by adding lands that became the South Unit.

What is the highest point in the park?

Red Shirt Table, at 3,340 feet in the South Unit, is the park's highest point; the Sharps Formation, the youngest rock layer, caps its tallest tables.

The park's main visitor center is named after Ben Reifel. Who was he?

A Sicangu Lakota born in a log cabin on the Rosebud Reservation, he served five terms as a Republican from 1961 to 1971 and was the only Native American in Congress during the 1960s.

The Ben Reifel Visitor Center was built in 1957–58 under which National Park Service programme?

Mission 66 was a ten-year programme, launched in 1956, to modernise park facilities by the Service's 50th anniversary in 1966; the Badlands visitor center was one of its early products.

Which 1990 Best Picture winner was partly filmed in the park?

Dances with Wolves, Kevin Costner's epic, won seven Oscars; the bison hunt was shot at the Triple U buffalo ranch near Fort Pierre, while the park supplied Badlands scenery.

Where was the 1868 treaty promising the Badlands would forever belong to the Sioux signed?

Fort Laramie, in present-day Wyoming, hosted the 1868 treaty that set aside the Great Sioux Reservation, including the Black Hills; Congress carved up that reservation in 1889.

One of the last Ghost Dances of 1890 was held on which flat-topped mesa in the park's South Unit?

Stronghold Table, a mesa reached only by a narrow neck of land, hosted one of the last Ghost Dances in late 1890; the dancers came down to Pine Ridge as winter closed in.

The Ghost Dance movement of 1890 followed the vision of which Paiute prophet?

Wovoka, also known as Jack Wilson, said he fell into a trance during the solar eclipse of 1 January 1889 and saw the dead return and the white man vanish.

Ghost Dance followers wore special shirts believed to have what power?

To stop bullets: the ghost shirts were believed to turn away soldiers' bullets, a faith shattered when the army's guns cut down the dancers' supporters in December 1890.

Chief Spotted Elk's band crossed the Badlands Wall in December 1890 on the way to which tragedy?

Wounded Knee Massacre: on 29 December 1890 the 7th Cavalry opened fire while disarming Spotted Elk's band, killing at least 150 Lakota, many of them women and children, and about 25 soldiers.

Which people, now part of North Dakota's Three Affiliated Tribes, hunted the Badlands before the Lakota?

The Arikara, a Caddoan-speaking farming people, camped in the Badlands before the Lakota arrived in the 18th century; charcoal from their fires and bison-butchering tools erode out of the stream banks.

The Badlands hold the richest known deposits of mammal fossils from which geological epoch?

They give a glimpse of life about 33 million years ago; the Lakota had already deduced from the bones and shells that the land was once under water.

Physician Hiram Prout attributed the first published Badlands fossil, an 1846 jaw fragment, to what creature?

A Paleotherium, a European Eocene relative of horses, was Prout's guess for the 1846 jaw; Joseph Leidy later recognised it as a brontothere, naming it Titanotherium prouti.

Which Yale professor visited in 1870 and pioneered better ways to extract near-complete skeletons?

O. C. Marsh, Yale's first professor of paleontology, led a student expedition to the Badlands in 1870 and worked out methods for taking out near-complete skeletons rather than scattered bones.

The park's oldest rock, the Pierre Shale, was laid down 75 million years ago at the bottom of what?

The floor of a shallow inland sea: the Western Interior Seaway left the Pierre Shale with fossils of ammonites and mosasaurs before draining away as the Rockies rose late in the Cretaceous.

The colourful band called the Yellow Mounds is what, geologically?

A deeply weathered ancient soil: the Yellow Mounds are a paleosol that developed on the exposed Pierre Shale after the sea withdrew, later buried under river and floodplain sediments.

Roughly how fast do the bare Badlands slopes erode in summer thunderstorms?

About an inch a year: the loose sediments soak up little rain, so brief downpours strip them fast; at that rate the formations are expected to wash away within about 500,000 years.

The ash beds preserved in the upper rock layers came from volcanic eruptions in which region?

Repeated eruptions to the west dusted the floodplains; the Brule Formation between them dates to about 32 to 26 million years ago.

Which endangered mammal, declared extinct in 1979, was reintroduced to the Badlands Wilderness?

Black-footed ferret: written off as extinct in 1979, the species was rediscovered in 1981 when a ranch dog at Meeteetse, Wyoming, killed one, and captive-bred animals were released in the park from 1994.

The park's reintroduced ferrets depend almost entirely on which animal for food and shelter?

Prairie dogs make up around 90% of a ferret's diet, and the ferrets live and raise their young in prairie dog burrows, which is why sylvatic plague in the towns is so dangerous to them.

The park's bison herd began in 1963 with 50 animals shipped from which other national park?

Theodore Roosevelt National Park in North Dakota, then a national memorial park, supplied the 50 founding bison in 1963; a 2019 project expanded the herd's range by about 22,000 acres.

Which bird, seen in the park's grasslands, is South Dakota's official state bird?

Ring-necked pheasant, an Asian species introduced to South Dakota in the early 1900s, became the state bird in 1943 and lives in the park's grassy draws and prairie edges.

Which grass, the most common in the park, is also South Dakota's official state grass?

Western wheatgrass, a cool-season sod-former one to three feet tall, was named South Dakota's state grass in 1970 and dominates the park's prairie.

Which of these animals is NOT on the park's wildlife list?

Grizzly bear: grizzlies were wiped out on the plains in the 19th century, while bison, pronghorn, bighorn sheep, swift fox, coyotes, bobcats and prairie rattlesnakes all live in the park.

The Badlands Wilderness, designated in 1976, covers about what fraction of the park?

A quarter, roughly: the 64,144-acre Badlands Wilderness makes up about 26% of the park; it has no marked trails, backcountry camping is allowed almost anywhere, and bicycles and motor vehicles are banned.

What was the standard size of a homestead when settlers first tried farming the Badlands?

160 acres was the Homestead Act allotment, far too little to feed a family on semi-arid prairie; the 1916 Stock-Raising Homestead Act allowed 640 acres, and the Dust Bowl drove most settlers out anyway.

The Badlands Loop Road through the North Unit carries which South Dakota highway number?

Highway 240, the Badlands Loop Road, links Interstate 90 at Wall with the Cactus Flat exit to the east, passing more than a dozen overlooks along the Badlands Wall.

During World War II the Army Air Force turned most of today's South Unit into what?

An air-to-ground gunnery and bombing range of some 340,000 acres was set up in 1942; bomber crews practised on ploughed bulls-eyes, and unexploded ordnance remains a hazard.

What did wartime crews use as ground targets on the Badlands range?

Old car bodies and painted oil drums served as targets, along with ploughed bulls-eyes; the range was declared surplus in the 1960s and its lands later became the park's South Unit.

Dewey Beard, evicted from the wartime Badlands range, was the last Lakota survivor of which battle?

Battle of the Little Bighorn: Dewey Beard, or Iron Hail, fought Custer's 7th Cavalry as a teenager in 1876 and died in 1955 as the last Lakota veteran of that fight.

The park has two campgrounds: Cedar Pass and which other?

Sage Creek, a free primitive campground in the wilderness area of the North Unit, has pit toilets and no water; Cedar Pass, near the visitor center, has the park's lodge and restaurant.

Wall Drug, the tourist emporium beside the park, first drew crowds in the 1930s by advertising what?

Free ice water was Dorothy Hustead's idea in the summer of 1936: signs along the highway pulled in hot motorists, and the store grew into a sprawling block-long complex.

What towering figure at Wall Drug can be seen from Interstate 90?

An 80-foot brontosaurus, built in 1967 by sculptor Emmet Sullivan, looms over the store's Interstate 90 exit; Wall Drug also holds a chapel and a western art gallery.

The Cold War historic site near Wall, South Dakota, preserves the last intact example of which missile system?

Minuteman II: the historic site preserves the Delta-01 launch control facility and the Delta-09 silo, kept intact after South Dakota's Minuteman II force was deactivated in the early 1990s under the START treaty.

Before 1990, which 1931 film was the last Western to win the Best Picture Oscar?

Cimarron, adapted from Edna Ferber's novel about the Oklahoma land rush, won Best Picture at the 1931 Academy Awards; no other Western took the award for almost six decades.

Which sheep-sized hoofed mammal, nicknamed the 'ruminating hog', is the park's most common fossil?

Oreodont: sheep-sized, hoofed herbivores such as Merycoidodon were so abundant on the ancient floodplains that their skulls are the park's most common fossil, earning them the nickname 'ruminating hogs'.

Roughly how large is Badlands National Park?

About 243,000 acres (242,756, or 379 square miles) spread across the North Unit along the Badlands Wall and the larger South Unit on the Pine Ridge Reservation.

Which 1992 thriller about an FBI agent on a reservation was partly filmed in the park?

Thunderheart, with Val Kilmer as a part-Sioux FBI agent investigating a murder on a reservation, was shot in the Badlands and on Pine Ridge, loosely inspired by 1970s unrest there.

Which Lakota leader's killing on Standing Rock in December 1890 sent his followers fleeing south?

Sitting Bull was shot by Indian agency police on 15 December 1890 while being arrested on the Standing Rock Reservation; some of his followers fled to join Spotted Elk's band.

From which sequence of sediments, laid down 37 to 23 million years ago, are the badlands eroded?

The White River Group, named for the river that flows past the park's southern side, comprises the Chamberlain Pass, Chadron and Brule formations; the younger Sharps Formation caps the highest tables.

Which institution has sent researchers to the White River Badlands almost every year since 1899?

South Dakota School of Mines, through its Museum of Geology, has run field camps in the Badlands since 1899 and holds one of the largest collections of Badlands fossils.

Which of these hiking trails starts near the Ben Reifel Visitor Center?

Cliff Shelf Nature Trail, a half-mile loop through a juniper-covered slump block just up the road from the visitor center, climbs boardwalks and steps to views over the badlands below.

Which subspecies of bighorn was reintroduced to the park after the native Audubon's bighorn died out?

Rocky Mountain bighorn: Audubon's bighorn, the Badlands' native subspecies, was hunted out in the early 20th century, and Rocky Mountain bighorns from Colorado were reintroduced in the 1960s.