Badlands National Park
On a visit to Badlands National Park you'll find a forbidding, sun-
South Dakota
2002, 2013, 2019
About The Park
The South Dakota Badlands, home of Badlands National Park, is a forbidding place that probably earned its name from the French trappers whose reference to it translates to a bad place to travel through. It bears a strong resemblance to the North Dakota Badlands and Theodore Roosevelt National Park about 250 miles to the north. Both of these Badlands bear little resemblance to the rest of their respective states. These parks are like two islands of magnificent scenery in two states dominated by farmlands.
The park’s location, off Interstate 90, about 50 miles east of Rapid City, South Dakota, makes it an easy park to get to. There is an earlier entrance to the park at Wall, SD off Interstate 90 where you can take State Road 240 south to the park’s Pinnacles entrance. I would recommend proceeding to the main (Northeast) entrance with its visitor center since that is always the best place to start in any park that you haven’t been to. This is all the more so if you have any interest in doing any hiking or would like to know exactly what you are looking at.
The park consists of three units. The North Unit is the most accessible and has the main park road and the Ben Reifel Visitor Center. The other two units (Stronghold and Palmer Creek) lie solely within the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation and are not accessed by any roads. They are strictly back country for those so inclined to that kind of hiking.
The main park road is paved and travels about 24 miles west from the visitor center. There are a number of overlooks to gaze out upon the Badlands scenery. From some of these you can take some relatively short hikes out into the Badlands. They’ll take you out into some very stark formations that are interesting and beautiful. There’s little water and minimal vegetation. One can easily see that travel through this area could be difficult and perilous.
Starting at the visitor center the paved part of the park road ends at route 240 and heads north out of the park toward the town of Wall. However, if you don’t mind driving a good graded road, and the weather isn’t wet or rainy (or wasn’t recently), you can drive the Sage Creek Rim Road and take a back country drive about 15 miles down to route 44 which you can then take west back to Rapid City. If a back country drive is not to your liking (and would be in violation of a rental car contract) you can take it about 3 miles to the Roberts Prairie Dog Town. The road was in excellent shape up to there this past trip and not a problem for any sedan. The road goes right through the prairie dog town and you can see and hear the prairie dogs up close. They were everywhere we looked and as we wandered away from the car they would bark to let the others know there were intruders.
Wildlife
Wildlife in the park consists of bison, bighorn sheep, vultures, pronghorn, bobcats, prairie dogs and a population of black footed ferrets reintroduced to the area in the 1990’s. These are currently considered to be the most endangered land mammal in North America. To see one of these would be a rare treat. The only place a visitor might see one of them would be in the Roberts Prairie Dog Town because prairie dogs are their main source of food. Other than an occasional bison, bighorn sheep and prairie dogs there’s not much wildlife to see off the paved park road. The starkness of the terrain gives wildlife little cover or grazing land for bison. Most of the bison are more likely to be found in the back country, where there may be more grazing land, or the Buffalo Gap National Grassland which is just to the south and west of the park.
Lodging
Cedar Pass lodge
Forever Resorts operates the Cedar Pass lodge which is the only lodging in the park. They have single and double (side-
Hiking
The hikes off the main park road are generally fairly short, from less than 1 to 2 miles (or so), and are out and back hikes into the Badlands. There are longer ones if you want that can be turned into loop hikes when combined with other trails. It is well worth stopping and at least doing a couple of the short hikes to really experience the park. Depending upon the time of day the park can be very colorful and if you are there throughout the day your pictures will reflect the changing light and colors and some will be vivid and others, especially in the midday overhead sun, can look kind of washed out. But all of them will reflect the very dramatic scenery of the Badlands.
Door Trail
The Door Trail by the Ben Reifel Visitor Center gives you a chance to walk out and wander around some Badlands terrain. You can make the hike as long or as short as works for you.
Notch Trail
The Notch Trail is a not too long but fairly challenging hike. It requires ascending an inclined cable and wood ladder about 40 feet. Once at the top the trail meanders along some ledges with not insignificant drop offs. They are not Zion-
Fossil Trail
The Fossil Trail is a boardwalk trail with fossil exhibits along the way. You are free to wander off trail, as you are all over the national park, because the natural erosion is taking place at enough of a significant pace that the park service doesn’t think people can do any lasting damage.
Saddle Pass Trail
The Saddle Pass Trail climbs up a badlands wall also into some very interesting scenery and views. It connects with some other trails so you have the option here to extend it for whatever length you’re comfortable with. You can hike up this and back down from the trailhead but the trail is steep and with enough loose gravel to make the descent a bit dicey.Castle Trail
For a longer hike, about 4 miles, we combined the Castle Trail off the park road to the north of the visitor center with the Saddle Pass Trail. This required us to ferry one car to the Saddle Pass trailhead and then park another car at the trailhead for the Castle trail. This gave us a nice, fairly level hike through some dramatic badlands scenery. We had to descend down the Saddle Pass Trail to get to our car. We then drove to the Castle trailhead and picked up the car that we left there. You could do the reverse and ascend the Saddle Pass Trail and hike the Castle Trail. This would probably be easier as ascending Saddle Pass is easier than descending it.
Fossils
The area is rich with fossils, which are illegal to collect, and a Ranger told me an interesting story about them. There was a time when erosion had revealed many of the bleached bones of fossils of ancient camels and rhinos. The land was part of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation which was appropriated as part of the war effort by the United States government during World War II for aerial and ground gunnery practice. He told me that the pilots would aim for these fossils because their white color stood out against the surrounding terrain. I doubt that the pilots knew what they were if this story is true. I was only able to confirm that the area was indeed used for gunnery practice, mostly in the Stronghold Unit, and the area is littered with discarded bullet cases and unexploded ordinance!
Other Points of Interest
If you are coming from Rapid City on I-
There is the Minuteman Missile National Historic Site nearby, right next to Interstate 90, that is administered by Badlands National Park. The tour takes you down into the control room and there is a decommissioned, and thus unarmed, missile in the silo.
The Rapid City area is a terrific destination where one can easily spend a week. There’s Mount Rushmore National Memorial and Custer State Park which has prairie dog towns and the largest buffalo herd in the country (more than 1300), the very scenic and unusual Needles Highway, the historic old cowboy town of Deadwood, South Dakota about 40 miles to the west, the Crazy Horse Memorial and there’s the famous Iron Mountain Road which is a loop road circling Custer State Park that has incredible views of Mount Rushmore and should not be missed!
Badlands National Park Photo Gallery
Rapid City Area Photo Gallery
Other Resources
Badlands National Park on the National Parks Service website -
Badlands National Park -
Badlands National Park -
Minuteman Missile National Historic Site -
Jewel Cave National Monument -
Other National Parks and National Monuments Within a Day’s Drive
Wind Cave National Park America’s 6th National Park has its famous cave and is 103 miles from Badlands and 55 miles south of Rapid City.
Devil’s Tower National Monument This iconic monolith, made famous in the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind, is about 190 miles west of Badlands and a 3.5 hour drive. It is about 106 miles from Rapid City.
Jewel Cave National Monument Another famous cave is about 106 miles southwest of Badlands and about a 2 hour drive. It is 55 miles southwest of Rapid City.
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Updated 02/11/23 7:04 PM
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