Badlands’ human history dates as far back as 12,000 years, when people traveled over the landscape camping, hunting, and quarrying. While there is no indication of any permanent settlement, over 300 archaeological sites have been found, with evidence of scorched rock and charcoal indicating campfires, bison bones indicating hunting and butchering, and quarrying of the chert and chalcedony (agate) to work into projectile points. Even pottery has been found in parts of Badlands.
The Lakota people traveling through the area called this “mako sica,” literally “badlands.” French-Canadian trappers were similarly uncomplimentary, calling the landscape le mauvaises terres a traverser ("bad lands to travel across."). It was those trappers and traders, however, who called attention to the fantastic geological features and extensive fossil deposits, with the earliest-known description of the area by James Clyman in 1823, as a member of Jedediah Smith's 11-man party through the White River Badlands.
Homesteaders in the Badlands, year unknown but probably around the mid-late 1800s, Badlands National Park / NPS file
Homesteaders of the mid-1800s and early 1900s tried – and sometimes failed – to make a go of sinking roots into the dusty Badlands through agriculture or ranching, via the Homestead Act of 1862, and other subsequent homesteading acts passed by Congress thereafter.
According to the National Archives:
The Homestead Act, enacted during the Civil War in 1862, provided that any adult citizen, or intended citizen, who had never borne arms against the U.S. government could claim 160 acres of surveyed government land. Claimants were required to live on and “improve” their plot by cultivating the land. After five years on the land, the original filer was entitled to the property, free and clear, except for a small registration fee. Title could also be acquired after only a six-month residency and trivial improvements, provided the claimant paid the government $1.25 per acre. After the Civil War, Union soldiers could deduct the time they had served from the residency requirements.
To learn more about homesteading in the Badlands, click here.
Much of this available land, however, came at the expense of the Native Americans already living there. The federal government passed the Dawes Act of 1887, stripping over 90 million acres of tribal land to give to non-native U.S. citizens.
Fast forward to World War II, when the U.S. Air Force (USAF) established a gunnery range by taking possession of 341,726 acres of land on the Pine Ridge Reservation of the Oglala Sioux in what is now the park’s Stronghold Unit, as well as 337 acres from the then-Badlands National Monument.
A view of part of the historic gunnery range from Sheep Mountain Table, Badlands National Park / NPS file
According to the National Park Service:
This land was used extensively in the early 1940s as air-to-air and air-to-ground gunnery ranges. Precision and demolition bombing exercises were also quite common. After the war, the South Dakota National Guard used portions of the bombing range as an artillery range. In 1968, the USAF declared most of the range excess property.
Sometimes confused with scrap metal, shell casings and other pieces of artillery can be found throughout the South Unit.
Firing took place within most of the present-day South Unit of Badlands National Park. Land was bought or leased at sub-prime costs from individual landowners and the Tribe in order to clear the area of human occupation. Old car bodies and 55-gallon drums painted bright yellow were used as targets. Bulls-eyes 250 feet across were plowed into the ground and used as targets by bombardier bombing flights. Small automatic aircraft called “drones” and 60 foot by 8 foot screens dragged behind planes served as mobile targets. Hundreds of fossil resources were destroyed in bombing efforts. Gleaming bright white from the air, the large fossil remains of the elephant-sized titanothere were commonly targeted by bombers. Today, the ground is littered with discarded bullet shells and unexploded ordinance.
To read more about the gunnery range at Badlands, click here.
In May 1922, Senator Peter Norbeck introduced a bill for making the Badlands area in South Dakota a national park. The suggested name at the time was Wonderland National Park. Several subsequent proposals over the years by other members of the U.S. Congress echoed Norbeck’s proposal and support for the establishment of a national park grew in the late 1920s. On March 4, 1929, Badlands National Monument was authorized. Almost 50 years later, this national monument was redesignated a national park on November 10, 1978.
1938 image of Upper Pinnacles Tunnel, about two miles southeast of the present Pinnacles Ranger Station and in use for only about four years, Badlands National Park / NPS file
