Badlands National Park: The Landscape Disappearing an Inch a Year

The Badlands. Mako Sica to the Lakota. Les mauvaises terres à traverser to the French trappers who showed up later. Two peoples, two languages, one identical complaint: this ground is bad to cross.

They were both describing the surface. Those stripes running through the buttes are a stack of vanished worlds laid down between 75 and 28 million years ago: a shallow inland sea at the bottom, a hot wet floodplain above it, then a cooling savanna full of grazers and cat-like predators with saber teeth. About 500,000 years ago the Cheyenne and White Rivers started cutting through all of it. Here is the part that gets me. Badlands rock erodes roughly an inch a year, while granite in the Black Hills an hour west takes 10,000 years to lose that same inch. In another 500,000 years these formations will be gone. Most parks feel permanent. This one is on a visible clock.

Know before you go

Badlands National Park sits in southwestern South Dakota, roughly an hour east of Rapid City, and it is open 24 hours a day, year round. Entry is $30 per private vehicle, $25 per motorcycle, or $15 per person on foot or bicycle, each pass good for seven days, and the park went cashless: credit or debit only at the Northeast, Pinnacles, and Interior entrance stations. There is no timed entry and no reservation system to get through the gate, so you can show up and drive in. Give it a full day minimum for the Badlands Loop Road plus the short trails near Ben Reifel Visitor Center, and carry your own water, because there is none on the trails.

Do you need a reservation for Badlands National Park?

No. Pay at the gate and drive in. No timed entry, no permit lottery, no app. After the reservation gauntlet at Zion, Rocky Mountain, and Glacier, this feels like a park from an earlier era.

Two things to sort out anyway. Bring a card, because the park stopped taking cash and there is no ATM at the entrance station. And decide where you are sleeping: Cedar Pass Campground is the developed option near the visitor center and normally runs on reservations, while Sage Creek Campground is free, 22 sites, first-come first-served, with pit toilets, covered tables, and no water. Bison wander through it. That is the appeal, not a warning label, but plan your water. Backcountry camping currently needs no permit, though it is worth checking in at Ben Reifel or the Pinnacles Entrance Station first. One last thing that catches people: cell service is unreliable, GPS out here is not always right, and Sage Creek Rim Road is unpaved and can close after storms. Download your map before you leave pavement.

What is it actually like out there?

Most first-timers drive the Badlands Loop Road, and they should. Paved, two lanes, more than a dozen overlooks through the North Unit, most of them short accessible boardwalks. You could see the whole thing from the driver's seat in ninety minutes. Do not do that.

The good stuff is the trail cluster at the Door and Window parking area, four hikes off one lot. Window is a quarter mile of boardwalk to a natural gap in the Badlands Wall. Door runs three quarters of a mile and then hands you off to open terrain where the maintained path simply ends. Notch Trail is the famous one: 1.5 miles round trip through a canyon, up a log ladder, then along a ledge to a view down the White River Valley. It is also the park's most-injured trail, and it has been closed before for rockfall work at the base of that ladder, so check the park's alerts page the morning you go. Heights a problem? Skip it. And it is treacherous after rain. Then there is the rule that makes this park different: Badlands has an Open Hike Policy, so you can leave the trail and walk anywhere you can safely go, including the Sage Creek Wilderness. Very few parks hand you that. The catch is real. These formations are much easier to climb up than down, and nobody is reaching you by phone.

For wildlife, take Sage Creek Rim Road at dawn or dusk. It overlooks the wilderness where the bison live and runs past Roberts Prairie Dog Town. Then walk the quarter-mile Fossil Exhibit Trail and reconsider the ground you drove in on. No dinosaurs here, because the bottom layer is old seafloor and dinosaurs did not swim. What you get instead is mosasaur, a marine reptile past 50 feet, and above it some of the most species-diverse Oligocene mammal beds in the world. At Ben Reifel you can watch technicians working real specimens through the glass of the fossil prep lab.

What about the South Unit?

Skip it and you have seen half a park. The South Unit, or Stronghold District, covers 133,300 acres and is co-managed by the Park Service with the Oglala Sioux Tribe. In 1942 the War Department took 341,725 acres of the Pine Ridge Reservation for a wartime aerial gunnery range, and most of it was not returned until 1968. Stronghold Table is thought to be the site of the last Ghost Dance of the 19th century. No road runs through it; you drive around it or up Sheep Mountain Table, starting at the White River Visitor Center on the Pine Ridge Reservation, which is the right place to understand what this land means to the Lakota.

Can I bring my dog to the Badlands?

Barely, and you should know that before you load the car. Dogs must be leashed on a lead no longer than six feet and are permitted only in developed areas and places open to motor vehicles: campgrounds, picnic areas, parking lots, and paved or gravel roads. They are banned from every hiking trail, from visitor centers, from the backcountry and Badlands Wilderness, and from prairie dog colonies, which carry disease risk. The workaround the rangers themselves suggest is the park's back roads. Old Northeast Road just north of Cedar Pass is an active ranch road into open prairie, legal for a leashed dog, and a better walk than a parking-lot loop. Watch surface temperature in summer; this ground bakes. Service animals are exempt from most of these rules, but not from the prairie dog town restriction.

Bringing kids?

One of the easier big parks with children, because everything good is short. Window, Fossil Exhibit, and Cliff Shelf all run half a mile or less, and the fossil replicas sell paleontology to a seven-year-old better than any museum case. Ben Reifel hands out Junior Ranger booklets. Two honest cautions: Notch Trail is wrong for young kids, full stop, and the drop-offs at Door Trail and the overlooks are unfenced once you step past the boardwalk.

Stay safe out there

Water first. The park recommends two quarts per person per two hours of hiking, and there is nothing to refill from once you leave the visitor center. Shade is close to nonexistent. Wear real shoes, because cactus spines and prairie rattlesnakes are both why the park says boots, not sandals. Prairie rattlesnakes here reach five feet and strike about half their body length, so watch where hands and feet go and call 911 if someone is bitten.

Keep 100 feet from all wildlife, bison included. The park's own standard is the clearest one I have seen written down: if an animal reacts to you at all, you are already too close. Weather changes fast here, so carry rain gear even on a blue morning.

Frequently asked questions

How much time do you need at Badlands National Park?

One full day covers the Badlands Loop Road overlooks and two or three of the short trails near the Door and Window parking area. Two days lets you add Sage Creek Rim Road at dawn for bison, a longer walk on the Castle or Medicine Root trails, and a night under the sky. Three days gets you into the South Unit, which most visitors never see.

Can you hike off-trail in Badlands National Park?

Yes. Badlands has an Open Hike Policy permitting off-trail travel anywhere you can go safely, including the Sage Creek Wilderness. The park asks for real judgment about it: formations are far easier to ascend than descend, and backcountry cell service is not something to count on. Everything you find, fossils and rocks included, stays where it is.

What is the best time of year to visit the Badlands?

Late spring and early fall give you moderate temperatures and thinner crowds. Summer brings heat and the year's busiest weeks, though early mornings are excellent and sunrise light on the wall is the best of the day. Winter is nearly empty and beautiful, but roads through the park can close in storms, so check South Dakota road conditions before committing.

Are dogs allowed on Badlands trails?

No. Dogs are prohibited on all hiking trails, in public buildings, in the backcountry and Badlands Wilderness, and in prairie dog towns. Leashed pets are welcome on paved and gravel roads, in parking areas, campgrounds, and picnic areas, and the park specifically recommends its back roads as the good option for walking a dog.

Put it on the map

Badlands is park #25 of 63 on the McSenderson US National Parks map, and one of the more satisfying ones to scratch off, partly because so few people plan a trip around it. If you are building the longer list, start with the full guide to all 63 parks. And if the erosion story hooked you, Bryce Canyon is the other park built entirely out of rock in the act of disappearing.

Ryan Laboy — Co-founder, McSenderson. Single-digit handicap golfer and ten-year skier based in Flagstaff, Arizona. Researches and designs every McSenderson map. hello@mcsenderson.com