Clear skies in the AM rain in the PM – lows in the 40’s and highs in the 80’s.
The plan for today is to tour the Badlands National Park by taking Route 240, which is a 40 mile loop road through the park going from Wall and reconnecting with I90 about 20 miles to the east. Like roads in most of the other national parks, the road only allows you to see a small portion of the 244,300 acres of the park.
The Badlands in southwest South Dakota are located about an hour east of Rapid City and south of Wall, SD on I90. They were named by the French trappers who explored the west in the early 1800’s and called the area a “bad land to cross.” The Badlands are among the best places on earth to study and understand the effects of erosion. For approximately 30 million years, mud, sand, and gravel were laid down in many layers. About one to four million years ago erosion began to outpace the deposits, leaving colorful spires resembling castles, and a landscape that looks from another world. It is currently eroding by wind and water at the rate of about an inch a year. Experts estimate that within 500,000 years, it will be flat.
The landscape is both beautiful and surreal. It is like nothing we’ve seen before. Frank Lloyd Wright said, “Yes, I say the aspects of the Dakota Badlands have more spiritual quality to impart to the mind of America than anything else in it made by man’s God.”
This area was once a portion of a giant salt water sea that covered much of the region we know as the Great Plains. Stretching from the Gulf of Mexico to Canada and from western Iowa to western Wyoming, this sea teemed with life. In today’s Badlands the bottom of that sea appears as a 2,000 foot thick, grayish-black sedimentary rock called the Pierre (pronounced “peer”) shale. This layer is an incredibly rich source of fossils; for centuries, animals sank to the bottom of the sea when they died and over a long course of time became fossils. Within the park, the fossilized remains of a variety of animals have been found.
Upheaval and volcanic activity pushed the sea floor up, and as the water was drained away, it left behind broad, marshy plains. About 25 million years ago, miniature three-toed horses, camels, saber-toothed cats, and other prehistoric animals roamed the area. When they died, many were buried by river sediments or just sank into the marshlands. Periodically, white volcanic ash covered the soil, hot winds blew across the plateaus and the terrain continued evolving.
The Badlands have vibrant colors caused by mineral deposits. The layers containing tinges of oxidized manganese have a purple cast. Iron oxide in small quantities produced the orange and tan layers. The volcanic ash, dropped by westerly winds from the Rockies, produced the white layers. In places where the ash fell and mixed with silt and clay in the streams, it produced the dirty grey layers.
A variety of creatures roam this area. They include: prairie dogs, porcupines, mice, cottontails and jackrabbits, bull snakes, racers, prairie rattlers, antelope, deer, eagles, and coyotes. In the late 1800’s the bison and bighorn sheep were hunted to near extinction in this area. To revive the look of that time, the National Park Service has reintroduced these animals to the park.
We talked with a ranger at the visitor’s center and learned that we were very fortunate to be here at this time. They have had a drought for the last ten years that was broken this year. Normally, they get 16 inches of participation a year, and this year they received 6 inches of rain in May alone. Therefore, everything is lush and green, which is quite unusual for the Badlands. We hope that the photos can show the subtle color variations in the layers within the formations. It is mind boggling to realize that a layer could have taken millions of years to form. The landscape looks like solid rock, but when we were out taking photos, if felt like you were walking on thick rubber mats, sort of spongy.
After leaving the Badlands, we headed east on our way back to Columbus. It rained most of the way off and on. We stopped for the night in North Sioux City, SD, just two exits north of Sioux City, IA. The only reason for this collection of two hotels, a gas station, and a McDonalds are the six or so casinos that are conveniently located for the Iowans who need to come the short distance to South Dakota and donate their money. Tomorrow, we continue eastward through the flood ravaged Midwest.
Photo Album
