Badlands National Park History

Natural history

During the youth of the Rocky Mountains, about 60 million years ago, large number of streams carried eroded soil, rock and other materials eastward from the range. These materials were deposited on the vast lowlands which are today called the Great Plains. Dense vegetation grew in these lowlands, then fell into swamps, and was later buried by new layers of sediments. Millions of years later, this plant material turned into lignite coal. Some of the plant life became petrified, and we can find large amounts of exposed petrified wood in the badlands. While sediments continued to be deposited, more streams cut down through the soft rock layers, carving the variety of mesas, buttes, rock formations, pinnacles, spires and valleys are the features of the badlands seen today.

Human history

For eleven thousand years humans used the area for hunting. They hunted bison, rabbits, and other animals.

Fossils hunters arrived after the 1840s. Trappers traveling from Fort Pierre to Fort Laramie collected fossils. One fossil ended up being described in the American Journal of Science. Within decades new species were being discovered.

Homesteaders arrived at the end of the 19th century and the US government removed the natives from their land. This culminated in the massacre at Wounded Knee, which is approximately 45 miles south of the park in the Pine Ridge Reservation.

The Dust Bowl of the 1930s prompted many homesteaders to move elsewhere. Some who stayed are still there today.

The United States Air Force took possession of more than 340,000 acres of the Pine Ridge Reservation and about 340 acres of what was then Badlands National Monument and used it extensively between 1942 and 1945 as a gunnery range. This is now the Stronghold unit of the park and is co-managed with the Oglala Sioux Tribe. Unexploded ordnance remains in the area.

^ Back to Top ^