Badlands National Park

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 of Badlands National Park. Bison, bighorn sheep, endangered black-footed ferrets, and swift fox roam one of the largest, protected mixed-grass prairies in the United States.

Hike, mountain bike, horseback ride, and rock climb through the Badlands National Park with an America Outdoors outfitter!

Quick Facts about Badlands National Park

•Established as a National Monument in 1939.

•Redesignated Badlands National Park in 1978.

•Acreage: 244,000

•Wilderness: 64,144 acres

•Visitation: approximately one million visitors each year from all over the world.

Key Resources:

•Largest expanse of protected prairie ecosystem in the National Park system

•Considered one of the world’s richest mammal fossil beds

•50% of Badlands National Park is co-managed with the Oglala Lakota Nation, the second largest American Indian Reservation in the United States

•Badlands National Park and the Buffalo Gap National Grasslands are the most successful reintroduction sites for the black-footed ferret, one of the world’s rarest mammals.