Badlands-National-Park | Tour Guides

Badlands National Park

10/09/2009 01:29 Author

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Containing the world’s richest Oligocene epoch fossil beds, dating 37-28 million years old, the evolutionary stories of mammals such as the horse and rhinoceros arise from the 244,000 acres of sharply eroded buttes, pinnacles, and spires. Bison, bighorn sheep, endangered black-footed ferrets, and swift fox roam one of the largest, protected mixed-grass prairies in the United States.

Badlands National Park

The Badlands Wall, much of which is preserved within the boundaries of Badlands National Park, may not

25216 Ben Reifel Road
P.O. Box 6
Interior, South Dakota 57750

Phone : (605) 433-5361

Fax : (605) 433-5404

conform to everyone's idea of beauty, but nobody can deny its theatricality. It's been compared to an enormous stage set—colorful, dramatic, and not quite real. Water, the main player on this stage, has been carving away at the cliffs for the past half million years or so, and it carves away an entire inch or more in some places each year. But there have been other players, too. Beasts with names like titanothere and archaeotherium once roamed here; their fossilized bones can be found by the hundreds. And today the Badlands Wall serves as a backdrop for bison, pronghorn, and bighorn sheep, as well as the million human visitors who pass through the park every year.

Directions to Badlands National Park

Badlands National Park is located in southwestern South Dakota and can be easily accessed by car. Plane or bus service is available to Rapid City, South Dakota, located approximately 80 miles west of the park.

By Car
Interstate 90 (I-90) is located directly north of the park and provides access to the Badlands Loop Road. For those traveling west on I-90, take Exit 131 (Interior) and follow the signs directing vehicles south approximately three miles to the Northeast Entrance gate. For those traveling east on I-90, take Exit 110 at Wall, South Dakota. Follow signs directing vehicles south approximately seven miles to the Pinnacles Entrance of the park.

State Highway 44 provides an alternate, scenic access to the park and intersects Highway 377 in the town of Interior. Follow 377 two miles north to the Interior Entrance gate.

Badlands National Park

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