Badlands National Park United States

Legendary

Originally a reservation for the Oglala Sioux Indians, the park now protects their prior territory.

Photo by Always Shooting

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A single fossil bed inside Badlands National Park holds some of the richest deposits of ancient mammal fossils anywhere on Earth. Scientists have pulled bones from creatures that lived here 33 million years ago, back when this dry, cracked landscape was covered by lush grasslands and shallow seas.

The Sioux, also known as the Lakota, lived in this region long before it became a national park. They hunted buffalo across the surrounding grasslands and considered parts of the Badlands sacred ground.

In 1890, thousands of Native Americans across the Great Plains, including many Lakota, took part in a spiritual movement called the Ghost Dance. Believers thought the ceremony would bring back the buffalo and make their traditional way of life return.

One of the last Ghost Dances ever performed took place right here, on a flat-topped mesa called Stronghold Table, inside what's now the park's South Unit. That same winter, tensions between the U.S. Army and the Lakota boiled over, leading to the Wounded Knee Massacre about 45 miles south of the park.

The South Unit is still jointly managed today by the National Park Service and the Oglala Lakota tribe. It holds deep cultural and spiritual meaning for the Lakota people.

The park's highest point is Red Shirt Table, rising 3,340 feet, also located in the South Unit. From up there, the layered rock formations stretch out for miles in bands of tan, orange, gray, and white.

Those colorful layers formed over millions of years as sediment piled up, then eroded away into the spires, canyons, and buttes visitors see today. Erosion here moves fast. Some formations lose about an inch of rock every year.

Badlands became a national monument in 1929 and a full national park in 1978.

Hike the Notch Trail for sweeping views of the White River Valley. Drive the Badlands Loop Road at sunset, when the rock formations glow orange and pink. Watch for bison, bighorn sheep, and prairie dogs, and keep an eye out for the black-footed ferret, one of the rarest mammals in North America, reintroduced right here in the park.