Badlands
Location: South Dakota
Established: 1978
Badlands National Park is the largest mixed-prairie grassland in the United States. If you're like me, that particular fact may not mean much, but consider this — prairies once covered about 1/3 of the land in North America, but today most of the prairies have been altered by agriculture or development and so the Badlands — with 60 different kinds of grasses that intertwine 410 other individual plant species to create a complex ecosystem that provides habitat, food sources, and water supply to prairie animals, insects and birdlife — are vital for the wilderness ecosystems in the US! Badlands National Park was named after its badlands formations comprised of canyons, buttes, fins and pinnacles made of large deposits of sedimentary rock that have eroded over time. The largest feature in the park is known as "the Wall", a 60-mile stretch of tens-of-millions-years-old rock that acts as a barrier between the upper and lower prairies. These striking geologic deposits contain one of the world’s richest fossil beds - - ancient horses and rhinos once roamed here. Today, you can find bison, bighorn sheep, prairie dogs, and black-footed ferrets.
