Walk Around The Rock Spend A Weekend Touring Badlands National Park And Watch The Scenery Come To Life

A prairie dog town fills with whistles as furry sentries scan the plains. Farther out, a bison writhes in a dirt wallow, raising up a dusty cloud. Still farther, a jagged ridge forms the backdrop for a vast natural stage.

Indians named this dramatic place “land bad.” French fur trappers dubbed it “bad lands to travel across.” Today, we call it Badlands National Park.

In southwestern South Dakota, 244,000 acres of grassland dissected by wasteland make a monument to the power of water to sculpt an eerie prospect. Infrequent heavy rains run quickly off the yielding rocky deposits of ancient rivers and seas, carving wild shapes and exposing fossils of mysterious mammals, long extinct.

Forming a 90-mile-long cliff to the north of the White River, the Badlands Wall splits the plains like a giant scar in the earth. Canyons twist between misshapen buttes; ravines wrap around lifeless towers.

Early explorers likened the landscape to ancient cities of stone. Some perceived minarets and turrets, others fortified chateaus. Even Frank Lloyd Wright saw in it a “vast harmonious building-scheme.”

How does geology mount such a grand show here? Arid environment, harsh heat and cold, rocks that readily erode and rapid washing away of any plants that take root are the formula. Yellow mounds, brown hills banded with red, stark white peaks taking on the changing color of sunlight - these are the daubs on nature’s palette. The word badlands, in fact, is now a generic term to describe such terrain anywhere it occurs. Just drive south from Interstate 90 to see the original.

The main route through the park is the modern Loop Road winding along and sometimes over the Badlands Wall for 22 miles between the Pinnacles Overlook and Cedar Pass. Wild sunflowers fringe the road, and an occasional prairie cottonwood relieves the desolation.

Most visitors spend just half a day in the park, stopping at roadside displays and taking a couple of short hikes. But stay over a day or two and the scene starts to come alive. Empty at first glance, the setting soon unveils many creatures adapted to extreme conditions.

Hunters exterminated the bison (commonly called buffalo) from the park a century ago, but a reintroduced herd now numbers several hundred. Some are usually visible from the Sage Creek Rim Road. Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep have replaced the native subspecies, hunted to extinction, that roamed these stony wastes.

Pronghorn antelope, the fastest animals on the continent, managed to survive man’s onslaught. A drive up the Loop Road can show a placid pronghorn herd grazing the grassland north of the Wall. Lucky viewers may see a swift group change direction in unison at up to 60 miles per hour.

While searching for bison in the Sage Creek area, pause at the Roberts Prairie Dog Town. Black-tailed prairie dogs scurry from their burrows looking for grass to eat. Their towns of tunnels sprawled for miles on the Great Plains before settlers eradicated them as pests. Elsewhere in the Sage Creek Wilderness Area, North America’s most endangered mammal, the black-footed ferret, is making a precarious comeback. With prairie dogs as their primary prey, these ferrets almost became extinct as their food supply waned.

The park is also home to the richest fossil beds in the world, laid down during the golden age of mammals. The Oligocene Epoch, 23 to 35 million years ago, witnessed the evolution of the horse, pig and sheep. Fossils of extinct giants here, like the rhinoceros-like titanothere, rest in museums around the world.

Walk the quarter-mile Fossil Exhibit Trail and look for the skull of mesohippus - a dog-sized ancestor of the horse. Farther on, part of a hyracodon skull reposes, an animal described as a “trim and speedy rhinoceros.” Sadly, plaster casts of fossils beside the trail replace the originals stolen by vandals.

Man arrived in the Badlands at least 11,000 years ago, and the Lakota, or Sioux, ranged the plains when Europeans arrived after 1800. Their domain later restricted to lands including the Pine Ridge Reservation to the south, the Lakota based their culture on the numberless bison. As prospectors rushed to find Black Hills gold, and as the bison dwindled, Sioux society gave way.

But in 1890, the ghost dance religion rebuilt their hopes. Wearing special shirts to protect them from soldiers bullets, the believers danced themselves into exhausted trances. They counted on a cataclysm to destroy the white man, restore game herds, and revive their dead ancestors. (A ghost shirt is preserved in the Ben Reifel Visitor Center at Cedar Pass.)

Stop at the Journey to Wounded Knee Overlook near Big Foot Pass. It was here that Chief Big Foot led his band of Lakota ghost dancers down through the Badlands Wall on Christmas Eve 1890. In a tragic fight five days later, 25 miles south of the White River Visitor Center, hundreds of Lakota men, women and children died, as well as 30 soldiers. The Wounded Knee Massacre was the last armed clash of significance in 400 years of Indian wars begun with the discovery of the New World.

Then came the cattle ranchers, followed by homesteaders who settled into sod houses. Yet these pioneers found only hardships of their own: blizzards and prairie fires, hailstorms, “grasshoppers so big they could dig the potatoes right out of the ground.” And drought - there was seldom enough water.

Ever resourceful, however, one homesteader who lasted only 18 months in the Badlands recalled covering the knotholes in his tarpaper shack with pancakes.

Gaze out toward the White River from the Homestead and Ranches Overlook and imagine the “starvation claims” that extracted the fruitless labors of hardscrabble farmers. Instead, the park today safeguards the largest remnant of mixed-grass prairie in the United States.

To see the Badlands at their wildest, hiking is the way to go. The five-mile Castle Trail crosses prairie and bleak rock. A mushroom-shaped hoodoo (stone pillar) stands guard nearby. Passing over low sod tables, the trail hugs the Wall with its carpenter’s toolbox of saw-toothed ridges and awl-shaped spires.

Or try the Door Trail, the easiest walk for getting engulfed by a cracked and corrugated land where pinnacles build upon parapets. This seems like the driest spot on Earth. The Cliff Shelf Nature Trail is lush by contrast. Part of the Wall above slumped, and the compacted rock traps water nourishing a small forest. Junipers with their blueberrylike cones hang over the path.

Finally, for some scary fun, brave the Notch Trail, whose end looks down on Cliff Shelf. The route to the Notch requires climbing a 61-rung ladder and negotiating a narrow ledge on the canyon wall. Those afraid of heights should skip this one. Along the way, aptly-named least chipmunks monitor the progress of intrepid hikers. Beware steep slopes after rain, though. The Badlands mud is sticky and slippery at the same time.

“All of a sudden you have 10-pound feet,” a park ranger warns. “And then you start sliding.”

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: If you go How to get there: Take either Exit 110 or 131 from Interstate 90 in southwestern South Dakota. The closest major airport is at Rapid City, 80 miles to the west. When to go: Spring and fall are the most pleasant seasons. Summer temperatures can rise above 100 degrees. Winter weather can include snow and blizzards. Admission: $10 per vehicle. The park is open year round. Where to stay: Inside the park the Cedar Pass Lodge is open from April to the first week of October, the exact dates depending on the weather. Cabins for two people start at $47.25. For reservations, call (605) 433-5460. Camping in the park at the Cedar Pass Campground is $10 per night (no reservations except for groups). No fee is collected at the Sage Creek Primitive Campground (no water available). In the town of Interior, just south of the Cedar Pass area, the Badlands Inn is open from May 15 to Sept. 30 Double rooms start at $43; call (800) 341-8000. There are 13 motels in the town of Wall, 8 miles north of the west park entrance. For Wall visitor information, call (605) 279-2665. Where to eat: The only food service in the park is the restaurant (open March 15-Oct. 31) at the Cedar Pass Lodge. In the town of Wall are five restaurants, or you can pick up picnic supplies there. Other things to do: This corner of South Dakota is full of places worth visiting. In the nearby town of Wall, stop by Wall Drug (“Free Ice Water”) and the National Grasslands Visitor Center. The Black Hills to the west include Mount Rushmore National Memorial, Wind Cave National Park, Custer State Park, Crazy Horse Memorial and Deadwood. To the south are the Pine Ridge Reservation (Oglala Sioux) and Wounded Knee Massacre Site. Information: Badlands National Park, P.O. Box 6, Interior, SD 57750; (605) 433-5361.