Badlands Wilderness

The Badlands are an alien landscape — jagged spires, buttes, and pinnacles of layered sediment rising from the Great Plains like the ruins of a forgotten civilization. The park protects the world's richest Oligocene fossil beds: saber-toothed cats, ancient rhinos, and three-toed horses erode from the walls every day. Bison, bighorn sheep, and black-footed ferrets roam the grasslands below.