The Badlands of North Dakota (700L)
The Badlands of North Dakota are a land of sharp ridges, striped hills, and wide skies. Wind and water carved the soft rock into buttes and gullies over many thousands of years. In some places you can see bright red layers called “scoria,” formed when underground coal seams burned and baked the clay. The Little Missouri River winds through the area and cuts a deep path as it flows north.
Today, the Badlands are home to Theodore Roosevelt National Park. Visitors might see bison, wild horses, prairie dogs, and golden eagles. Grasslands and patches of juniper and cottonwood trees provide food and shelter for wildlife. Trails and scenic drives lead to overlooks where the sunset glows orange on the cliffs.
People have lived here for a long time. Tribal nations have stories and ties to this land, and ranchers still use nearby grasslands. In the 1880s, a young Theodore Roosevelt came to ranch and found strength in the rugged country. His time here helped shape his ideas about protecting wild places. Today, the Badlands connect nature, history, and the open spaces of the northern plains.
The Badlands of North Dakota (950L)
In western North Dakota, the Badlands spread in bands of broken hills and narrow draws, a landscape shaped by time, weather, and fire. Erosion is the main sculptor: rainstorms slice into soft sediments; freeze–thaw cycles pry rock apart; and the Little Missouri River saws deeper each year as it snakes north. The cliffs appear striped because ancient layers of mudstone, silt, and ash weather at different rates. In places the earth blushes a striking red, where long-ago coal seams burned hot enough to bake the surrounding clays into hard “scoria.” The result is a rugged mosaic of buttes, benches, pinnacles, and coulees that look especially dramatic when late light washes them in orange and tan.
Amid this rough topography, life adapts. Prairie grasses—blue grama, little bluestem, and western wheatgrass—anchor thin soils, while sagebrush, juniper, and pockets of cottonwood find purchase along drainages. Bison graze the uplands; pronghorn trot the open flats; bighorn sheep navigate ledges; and prairie dogs clip lawns around their burrows, drawing hawks and eagles overhead. On summer evenings, nighthawks sweep for insects, and after dark the sky opens like a planetarium. The semiarid climate challenges every species, yet the community persists because drought, wind, and fire are not disturbances from the outside; they are part of the system itself.
People, too, have long histories here. Indigenous nations developed routes, stories, and seasonal use that mapped the country in memory as well as in trail. In the 1880s, a grieving young Theodore Roosevelt arrived to ranch along the Little Missouri. He found work, hardship, and perspective in the broken country, a blend that later fed his conservation policies as President. Today that legacy is most visible in Theodore Roosevelt National Park, where overlooks, trails, and the Maah Daah Hey Trail connect visitors to ridgelines and river bottoms. The park’s herds and prairie dog towns are not exhibits behind fences; they are pieces of a working grassland.
Modern pressures are real—energy development, invasive plants, and fragmented habitat among them—but so are efforts to study, restore, and manage across boundaries. Water quality projects, prescribed fire, and cooperative grazing plans attempt to keep the system flexible rather than fixed. That is the lesson the Badlands teach: landscapes change, and resilience grows when we acknowledge that change, learn its rhythms, and leave enough room—literal and legal—for wind, water, and wild lives to keep working the land.