About Badlands National Park

This beautiful national park protects 242,756 acres of sharply eroded buttes and pinnacles, along with the largest undisturbed mixed grass prairie in the United States. The Badlands Wilderness protects 64,144 acres of the park's North Unit as a designated wilderness area, and the black-footed ferret one of the most endangered mammals in the world was reintroduced to the wild there. 

This national park was originally a reservation of the Oglala Sioux Indians and spans the southern unit of the park. The area around Stronghold Table was originally Sioux territory, and is revered as a ceremonial sacred site rather than a place to live. In 1868, at the Second Treaty of Fort Laramie, the United States assured the Sioux that the Badlands shall forever be the property of the Sioux. In 1889, however, the treaty was broken and the Badlands were confiscated by the United States and unilaterally incorporated into a national park.

Package Suggestions