11,000 years. That’s how long humans have been present in the Badlands of South Dakota. At the end of the last ice age Native Americans hunted mammoth. Later various tribes hunted bison, until the Lakota Sioux arrived and settled into the vast landscape. They stayed until the arrival of the American Government and the events that led to the massacre at Wounded Knee in 1890.
The Badlands National Monument was established in 1939. It was re-designated as a National Park in 1978.
Hiking out into the badlands, one can easily picture what it was like hundreds, even thousands, of years ago.
