Tag: badlands

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Exploring the Other Badlands

By Michael Zimny

No trails lead to Cedar Butte in the remote South Unit of the Badlands.

Over the summer, Badlands National Park offered visitors a guided hike to Cedar Butte, in the park’s less-explored South Unit. The short, steep ascent can serve as an introduction to the off-trail, South Unit experience, or it can simply be a place people go seeking peace and inspiration.

South Unit Head Ranger Richard Sherman understands the psychic impact discovering the Badlands’ spheres of solitude can have.”To me it’s kind of a magic place,” he says.”It’s been my playground all my life.”

A member of the Oglala Sioux Tribe, Sherman grew up on the Pine Ridge Reservation, exploring this terrain when it was officially off limits. He can recall the days when the military was still using the present South Unit as a bombing range. (“You can hike there any given day and find old ordnance.”) He’s never stopped exploring here. Before he worked for the National Park Service he was a longtime wildlife biologist for the tribe. An ethnobotanist, he often gives walking tours of Badlands flora, pointing out plants and their traditional uses. He co-wrote the book on integrating traditional indigenous knowledge into natural resource management. He knows how to survive off the land and how to get where he’s going.

He camps out here often. Alone, in a way, but not alone.

“The wildlife don’t really fear you if you’re not hunting them,” Sherman says.”One experience I had — it was a cold, late fall day. It was frigid but the sun was out, there weren’t any clouds. I became drowsy so I lay down next to a draw. I woke up and looked across the draw, just a few feet away, and there was a bobcat looking at me. I was probably snoring and it thought I was purring or something. It continued to watch me for awhile and then it lay down itself and fell asleep.

“I often see them out. If I’m moving slowly, like I have no particular purpose, they don’t seem to fear me at all.”

The South Unit has no developed trails and Sherman likes it that way. The sun and the places he grew up with are his guides. As a guide himself, he has introduced people from all over the world to some of the South Unit’s historic and sacred sites. For some, the experience is life changing.

Badlands South Unit Ranger Richard Sherman points out table formations from atop Cedar Butte.

“The people that come over from countries that are crowded — and there’s never a silent place they can go to reflect — when they come to the Badlands they finally get that for the first time. Sometimes I’ll just leave them alone to be by themselves and experience that and they just become lost in thought, and I guess enraptured by the whole situation. There’s no sound out there except the wind and sometimes a coyote, possibly a red-tailed hawk screeching. Some people come back year after year just to experience the same thing, and just get sort of lost within themselves. Some will lie down and sleep. Some will pray and some will sing. Some will just sit there alone and gaze.”

On our hike to Cedar Butte, he pointed out edible and medicinal plants, like a trio of scurf peas. Prairie turnip (Psoralea esculenta), or Timpsila in Lakota, are a staple.”You can eat it as it comes out of the ground or you can braid them together and dry them. I have some that are about 10 years old and I’m still using them now. It’s one of the most important items now that’s being gathered. We’re of course a hunter-gatherer nation here.”

Silver scurf pea (Psoralea argophylla) was traditionally used by Lakota horsemen as a restorative food for tired horses. Slimflower scurf pea (Psoralea tenuiflora) root makes a pain-relieving tea.

After a short drive from the White River Visitor Center, the hike to the top of Cedar Butte is short but steep, following a bighorn sheep trail.

“Cedar Butte is probably the most important breeding area for bighorn sheep in the South Unit,” says Sherman.”At one time we had an indigenous bighorn sheep here called the Audubon. That became extinct back in the early 1920s. The last band was spotted just north of Cedar Butte on Sheep Mountain Table in 1922. They were in the entire Badlands area but they were completely hunted out.

“[In the 1960s] the state of South Dakota and the National Park Service collaborated to bring bighorns back. They had [Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep] in an enclosure in the North Unit, then they began to die away. So they opened the gates and let them pioneer away as they would, and they drifted over here. The females and the young took up residence in the area. Then when the rutting season [late October through November] begins, the rams come in from all over.” That’s when a low-profile hiker might observe the thunder clap of anxious rams butting heads over who gets to procreate.

Sherman has seen sheep — even small lambs — scale steep canyon walls. Less sure-footed humans should probably wear hiking boots with decent traction. The way up follows a sandy rockslide where a chunk of butte broke off a few years back. A couple of the hikers spent considerable time sliding on their backsides.

At the top of the trail we reached an open meadow where you can still see the furrow where settlers used draft horses to skid cedar logs destined to serve as lower cabin logs and corral posts. At the butte’s edge, one ancient cedar, long since deceased, was deeply saw-gouged but standing defiant.

The dead but defiant cedar.

Approaching the west, Sherman pointed out sheep beds, dimpled sections of earth bighorns return to for rest or to groom. We spotted a couple ewes as they disappeared into the trees. At the top, narrow isthmuses stretch outward, opening panoramic views of distant tables (Badlands mesas) — Galigo Table, Cuny Table, Stronghold Table. Dry creeks wind through low places stippled with rocks like giant shark’s teeth and smooth pillars of sediment topped with mops of prickly pear. Up here, the eye becomes a hawk in flight.

This place has long been hallowed and is today.”Cedar Butte is important as a place where people go prior to the Sun Dance and sequester themselves and seek visions,” says Sherman.

“I spoke to an elderly man back in the’90s. He was in his 90s at that time. He told me that they used to take people who died and wrap them in a hide and take them up on Cedar Butte and put them up in the trees there.”

He checked anthills for signs of that solemn custom and found them, in bead form.

“It’s somewhat of a sacred place. Of course to the Lakota everything is sacred — the land is sacred, the day is sacred, life is sacred.”

Michael Zimny is the social media engagement specialist for South Dakota Public Broadcasting in Vermillion. He blogs for SDPB and contributes arts columns to the South Dakota Magazine website.

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Badlands Spring

Millions of years of erosion have carved the beauty that is Badlands National Park. Besides the breathtaking striated buttes and canyons, its 244,000 acres are home to one of the world’s largest fossil beds. It’s also a terrific place to spot wildflowers and wildlife, like bighorn sheep, bison, prairie dogs, eagles and rattlesnakes. You might even spot an endangered black-footed ferret. John Mitchell visited this spring and shared these photos.

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Coldlands Beauty

By Katie Hunhoff

The Badlands are a solitary destination even in temperate seasons, but frigid temperatures ensure more privacy. Photographer Carl Johnson likes the Badlands for its seclusion, in summer or winter.

Johnson has explored the Badlands since he was a kid living in Rapid City. Now a professional photographer in Anchorage, Alaska, he still comes home to photograph and explore the unique landscape.

His fascination with the Badlands grew from his early interest in paleontology and mineralogy. He searched canyons and gullies throughout the Black Hills for rocks and fossils. At age 10 he showed some of his finds to the professors at the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology.

“It’s an island of strangeness in the middle of the prairie, and so unique and isolated. Once you’re there, there are so many unique places to go off the road system of the park. It’s an otherworldly place you can explore for the sake of exploring or to get your creative juices flowing. It’s great for inspiration.”

Johnson’s forays in the Badlands, and other favorite haunts like Black Elk Peak and Grizzly Bear Creek fostered a love for wild places. Photography came, unexpectedly, when he joined the Navy after high school. He began working as a photojournalist while serving as ship’s photographer for the U.S.S. Haleakala and U.S.S. David R. Ray, photographing everything from re-enlistment ceremonies to missile firings. He continued taking photos while attending the University of Minnesota. A stint working at the Boundary Waters in northern Minnesota got him interested nature photography.

He admits that as a youngster, he didn’t fully appreciate the benefits of solitude in the outdoors. Years later he read Whitman, Thoreau and Sigurd Olson.”They made me think about the outdoors in ways that hadn’t occurred to me, and it changed how I see wilderness and what I do with my photography.”

When searching for Badlands wildlife Johnson doesn’t just capture an image, but tries to understand and picture the animal in the place where it lives.”You see things more holistically when you combine that understanding with a photographic vision,” he says.

The wide-open spaces in the Badlands don’t provide a lot of cover while searching for wildlife.”A lot of it is just luck. For example, I was photographing some rolling hills and looked over and saw a coyote,” he says.”Otherwise, a lot of it is understanding the subject and how to behave. And the luck factor, that’s important.”

Johnson recently married an Anchorage native, Michelle. His family has left South Dakota, but he still returns home to the Badlands.”There is something wild and open and inviting there,” he says.

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the January/February 2009 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.

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Into the Badlands

By Mike Heintz

Editor’s Note: The March/April 2016 issue of South Dakota Magazine features a story on an old World War II era bombing range in a portion of the Badlands. Mike Heintz, a South Dakota native now living in southern California, photographed the area in October of 2000. This is the story of his journey.

Heading out of Rapid City into the Badlands on Highway 44 can put you into another dimension. It starts when you drop down into the Cheyenne River Valley with its great stands of old cottonwoods. You might be lucky enough to catch them after the first frost when the leaves have turned. The wind won’t let them stay for long. From there, you approach the Badlands, a maze of eroded cliffs and spires carved in prehistoric times. They are aptly named for their inhospitable reality, stark beauty and threatening nature. Little has changed since the beginning. These canyons have produced a colorful and foreboding history.

Dozens of old cars litter a remote portion of the Badlands that was once used as a bombing range during World War II.

Just before I entered the park I drove through the little town of Scenic. The Longhorn Bar survived there from 1906 until just a few years ago. It may well have been the most infamous bar in South Dakota. I can’t imagine the characters that sat on those bar stools made from iron tractor seats bolted to the angle iron. The bullet holes in the walls are real. Now, the skulls hung over the porch roof are melting away and falling off the board rack to which they were tied. A piece of plywood is nailed over the front door, which has become a place to note your feelings. The old sign reads:

Long Horn Saloon

1906 Scenic So Dak 1906

Whiskey Beer Wine Soda

Tobacco Lunch Dancing

Indians Allowed Lakota Iyos Nina Upo

You can sense the Pine Ridge. It lies across the White River just south of town. It’s a huge piece of land as large as the state of Connecticut. Much of it looks as it did 200 years ago, and much has happened there since. It was created as a place to contain some of the last of the warrior tribes. This can be a lonesome road because it’s little used except by the people who live out there, or by the occasional traveler wanting to see the wilder side of South Dakota. The highway gets bumpy as it crosses into the Badlands. It’s the gumbo soil on which the road is built. It’s always changing. I passed a big prairie dog town. There has been a real effort to kill them off, but with only limited success. Most drivers in that country are on a point A to B mission. Everything in between is wasted time. To me it’s a movie that’s different every time I drive it. The landscape changes with the seasons and light.

Another 20 miles and you come to the town on Interior. A survivor of its own history, these little towns next to the rez have always been a result of the collision of culture. It’s a rough and tumble place that still buys groceries at the old Badlands Store and socializes at either the Horseshoe or Wagon Wheel Bar. They have both seen wild times. The owner of the Wagon Wheel had a pet bull named Radar that he kept out back. Many a patron found out the hard way that old Radar wasn’t an easy ride. There is a gas pump across the street in a vacant lot. You can pay for gas at the bar — a good thing to know if you’re caught on Highway 44 after dark. It’s probably the only place to get gas between Kadoka and Rapid City.

It was there that my mother and I met Ansel Woodenknife at his cafe. We were the only visitors, and as usual I struck up a conversation while trying some of his special fry bread. He mixes and packages it behind the cafe. The ingredients are based on his grandmother’s recipe. He markets Woodenknife Fry Bread Mix all around the country.

Old car bodies were arranged in a circle with a cross through the middle as targets for B-17 pilots and machine gunners from the nearby Rapid City Army Air Base.

I have been finding and photographing old abandoned vehicles all over the West for many years. I’ve felt compelled to do so out of a sense of art and history, and to do it before it’s too late. When I told Ansel about my project, he said,”I know where there are some old cars.” He said that in 1942 the then Army Air Corps seized a big piece of the Pine Ridge and turned it into a bombing range. Much of the property was confiscated and the people living there were forced to leave.

Sometime around then, many old cars were gathered and hauled out to several remote places. They were arranged in the shape of a circle with a line crossing itself in the center — a giant bull’s eye to be practice bombed. Mostly the pilots used dummy bombs filed with sand. As Ansel told the story my imagination grew.”Yes,” he said.”Those cars are still there.” We agreed that maybe someday we could go out there and find them.

The years passed by, and almost every fall when I came home from Southern California, I’d ask him about the cars. Finally, after about seven years, he said,”Let’s go tomorrow.” I met him that morning and we headed west with our pickups to get into the rez. We had to ford the White River, aptly named for the sediment it carries out of the Badlands. We drove down a little dirt road to the riverbank and he said,”Water’s too deep.” We’d have to try another time.

Three more years passed and I was visiting a friend near Silver City. I called Ansel and he said,”I’ll meet you at the station in the morning.” He had his friend Leroy with him, a very gentle older Indian who helped Ansel around the place. I first met Leroy on an earlier visit when he was loading boxes of fry bread mix into Ansel’s truck.

Most of the cars are pre-World War II models, though some have been identified as late 1940s.

I hadn’t even had a chance to get coffee before I raced out of the Hills and across the Badlands to Interior. By that time I was getting hungry and had no idea when I might get something to eat. The Badlands Standard had two gas pumps and sold a little bit of everything. We gassed up, I got my coffee and had a cheese sandwich that was frozen solid as a rock. Then we headed off to the White River.

This time he thought we could get across. I was apprehensive. The river was wide and so cloudy you couldn’t see the bottom. I watched them go first. The water was up to the bumper. I let them get clear across before I drove in. No way was I going to lose my truck”Butch” to that white water.

We set out across the raw prairie, occasionally coming to a fence that we had to follow until we found a gate. We climbed into the back of Ansel’s truck and Leroy pointed south to a distant set of hills.”See that pine tree on that hill way over there? The second hill to the right is where I saw the planes fly over when I was a kid,” he said. We headed that way. The grass was grazed down close to the ground, so we left no track. There aren’t many roads across that land and we weren’t even close to one. We drove a long way and never even saw a cow.

Then, as we crested a little hill, there they were. I didn’t really know what to expect, but I wasn’t quite prepared for what I saw. There must have been 50 or 60 cars out there, mostly in a circle about 40 feet apart. They were rusty brown with the burnt gold grass up to their hips. They were mostly of a 1930s vintage with a couple of ’40s. Some had roofs caved in, but most of them were intact. The engines were gone, so they were just shells.

Both Native and non-Native farmers were moved off their land to make way for the bombing range.

After all these years I was finally there. After a bit, Ansel said,”We’re going to go now.” It had never occurred to me that they were going to leave me out there on my own. Could I even find my way back out? Soon the boys were gone, and I was left alone in that haunted cemetery of old cars. The grass was tall and leaning over in the wind. The cars creaked and the loneliness of that place settled into my bones. It reminded me of a little graveyard.

Shooting with film is becoming a lost art. All of my work has been on Kodachrome and most of it with a hand held camera. I like my old Nikon because it’s heavy and you can hold it still. You have to wait for a moment when the wind dies down and hold your breath for each shot. A couple of hours of that can be exhausting. I knew that I was a rare visitor, and that carried a responsibility to do my best. Sometimes you know that you were chosen for a moment in time, and I think that’s what happened on that day. Some of the cars had”OST” spray-painted on them in orange. Ansel told me that meant”Oglala Sioux Tribe.”

The days grow short in late October and I knew it would soon be time to go. I didn’t know how long it would take to find my way back. I think we had come about 14 miles, and things look different when you are going the other direction. I had to find the same spot to cross the river, maybe spend the night in the truck and continue the next day. I was lucky and got back across before dark. By that time the frozen sandwich seemed like a long time ago. I stopped at the only cafe (the Woodenknife had long since closed). The girl was curious about what I was doing out there. When I told her she said,”Oh, you’re the one. Ansel called my husband this morning and asked if he knew where those cars were?”

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Autumn in the Badlands

Badlands National Park probably isn’t at the top of your list for a fall foliage drive; there’s no forest. But Christian Begeman took a trip through the sandstone buttes in October anyway. We think the pink stripes in the ancient pinnacles make up for lack of colored leaves. And the yellowing grassland paints a rich backdrop for antelope and coyote. See more of Begeman’s work at cbegeman.blogspot.com.

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Badlands Beauty

Jon Larsen shared these recent photos from Badlands National Park. Larsen is a hobby photographer and computer repairman from Spearfish. “I’ve been taking photos for years, but my serious phase started with my new bride who was already an accomplished photographer,” Larsen says. “I plan to spend the rest of my days trying to become half as good as she is.” See more of his work at fiskr-larsen.artistwebsites.com.
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Stranded in Quinn

By John M. Thorson


It was right before the blizzard of 1949 when I began my trip back to school after Christmas break. At the time I was a graduate student in Logan, Utah visiting my parents in Crooks for the holidays. I started my trip back to Logan in a convertible stuffed with seven people. The weather was cloudy and wintry, but there was no doubt we were facing a major winter storm. Eventually, the ground blizzard combined with the darkness slowed us to a crawl.

After about an hour we drove to a nearby ranch house hoping to warm up. The rancher’s wife told us that we were only about a mile from town so we started out again. I rode with my head out the window telling the driver where to turn because the car’s heater couldn’t keep up with the ice forming on the windshield.

Later a large cattle truck passed, giving us hope that we could go on, but it turned into the tiny town of Quinn and we followed it in.

On the edge of town there was a small six-unit motel. Usually closed in the winter, the owner opened it up to accommodate stranded travelers. The motel was already full so we were sent to the cafe where there were more refugees from the storm like us.

Many local families took in those who were stranded. Jackson Good, one of the seven in the convertible, and I, being single, were sent to the school dormitory, where we could stay for $2 a night. The first night we stayed in a warm room right off the kitchen. The remaining nights we were in the boys’ room, a cavernous place with several beds. The caretakers had a fire going for us in the evening, but no extra wood was to be seen so we pushed one bed as close to the stove as we dared and piled on a lot of quilts. The fire was always out by morning so we would get up and get to the cafe as quickly as possible.

The next three mornings the wind was relentless and the temperature was well below zero. It’s a good thing we never heard of wind chill or we would have never ventured outside. Drifts six to eight feet tall were common. One truck, stuck crossways in the street, was almost covered with snow. The cafÈ, which stayed open throughout the storm, became a center of activity for locals and the stranded alike. Coffee was always available and there were always a few people around.

The local people went out of their way to make life tolerable for their guests. The cafe opened charge accounts for us and the bank cashed checks with few questions asked. As I had left most of my money in Logan, Jackson cashed a check and loaned me $20, on which I managed to get by.

Like the cafe, the saloon next door didn’t close. A poker game started Sunday night and was still going six days later. If you bellied up to the bar you could get “soaked” without taking a drink. Snow was blowing into the attic, melting and dripping through a seam directly above the bar. Each day the ceiling hung a little lower from the moisture damage.

One night a larger group of people gathered at the cafe and people showed off their talents by lamp light. A local man played tunes on the saw. One Colorado man strummed his guitar and a West Virginian showed us how to clog dance. Community singing drowned out the storm and lifted our spirits a little.

Our outlook improved on Thursday when the wind shifted from the south. Frazzled nerves began to heal. Some highly motivated people set out on foot along the railroad tracks for Wall, six miles to the west. Late in the day they returned with news that we were a lot better off than those stranded in Wall. Some travelers had spent most of their time on a bus.

One of the residents asked for help finding his father-in-law, who had left town late Sunday night heading for his ranch several miles north. After days spent indoors, some of us thought this would be a great way to get out and do something. We loaded his Mercury with shovels and headed north.

We shoveled snow, pushed the car through and drove full-speed into drifts. Hours later we were four miles north of town and the road was still drifted across as high as the fences. Getting back to town was easier, but it took us until after dark. We all felt good about helping with the search, but we did not find the man’s father-in-law. I never did hear if he was ever located.

Friday was a bad day. Nerves which had healed frazzled again because the snowplows had still failed to arrive. One carload of people tried to leave. We watched them attempt to drive to the highway but they got stuck three feet into the first drift they encountered.

Saturday the plow from the east met up with the plow from the west at a big drift just outside of town. We were free to leave. After profusely thanking the good people of Quinn and settling our debts, we joined the caravan going west. Slowly we made our way to Rapid City. The plows had not been able to open the road through some of the road cuts so they plowed trails through the fields. When we detoured through the fields we realized our six-day inconvenience was nothing compared to the devastating losses suffered by ranchers. Some of the thousands of cattle killed by the storm littered the fields, many on their backs with their feet sticking straight up.

We who were Utah-bound stayed in Rapid City because the wind closed the roads through the Hills again. The storm that brought all the snow to South Dakota made the entire trip to Logan difficult, but we eventually arrived.

A couple years later I visited Quinn and stopped at the cafe. A list of people stranded in Quinn was on the wall. The owner said several people had either stopped in or written.

Since Interstate 90 was built, Quinn is just a name on an exit sign to most people, but not to those of us who were stranded there in 1949. In March of 1994, my wife and I left the highway to visit Quinn. As to be expected, many changes were evident. The motel, cafe, saloon and dormitory were gone. The water tower was all I recognized.

Memories of an unforgettable six days are all that remain.

Editor’s Note: John M. Thorson was living in Colorado Springs, Colorado when he shared this wintry memory in our Jan/Feb 1995 issue. To order a copy or to subscribe, call 1-800-456-5117.


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Lost in South Dakota

By Katie Hunhoff

A woman and two men spent the night in the Badlands this summer when they lost their way in the Sage Creek Wilderness Area. The hikers, all in their twenties, called 911 on Sunday evening after becoming lost in the rocky crevices and peaks.

The park’s search and rescue team headed to the Pinnacles Overlook to look for the hikers. They spotted them by air from a mile away. After a texting conversation, the hikers and rangers decided the safest option was for them to sleep in the wilderness. The rough terrain is dangerous to traverse in the dark, and the sun was setting fast. Early the next morning, the rangers rendezvoused with the hungry trio.

The mishap had a happy ending, but it was a reminder that although sometimes it feels like there isn’t much room for exploration or discovery, South Dakota has some big wide open spaces. Kim Ode, a Sioux Falls native who now writes for the Minneapolis Star Tribune, wrote some tips to traversing the Badlands in a recent issue of South Dakota Magazine. First, she advised that you should bring a compass, but not depend on it. She recommends keeping a recognizable point in front of you and behind you so you can know your position at all times.

“It’s amazing how the landscape blends into sameness once you’ve hiked over a few ridges,” she wrote. “Stay focused.” The easy ability to find yourself lost in the Badlands is also the reason it is worth visiting, according to Ode. “Enjoy the Badlands for the respite they provide from modern life. You are walking amid the bones of an ancient land. If you can, give them a couple of days — the first to get the buzz out of your head, the second to let in the silence.”

Dale Korslund, an Irene farmer, also spent a night in the wilderness after getting lost while hunting with his uncle in the dense Ponderosa pines in the Black Hills. It was November of 1965 and Korslund was tracking a deer in Rifle Pit Canyon, southwest of Cheyenne Crossing. By 5 p.m. the sun had sunk over the mountain horizon and he realized he was lost.

“They say I was walking in circles,” Korslund recalls. “I finally found shelter under a couple of fallen trees.” The next morning, after a grueling night of temperatures near zero, a team of game wardens and forest rangers found him.

He was reunited with his uncle, who joked that he was about to put Korslund’s face on a milk carton. “That wouldn’t have done any good,” Korslund was in a good enough mood to joke in reply. “Most of the guys out there drink Jack Daniels.”

Stay safe as you explore South Dakota. Our population is already too sparse. We’d rather not lose anyone.

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Another Good Day in the Badlands

By Christian Begeman

I think it is appropriate that the last column of this photographic series of South Dakota’s natural landmarks is dedicated to the unique landscapes of Badlands National Park. According to the National Park Service’s website, approximately one million visitors from all over the world visit the Badlands every year. And why not? The park consists of 244,000 acres, 64,144 of which are deemed wilderness acres. It is the largest expanse of protected prairie in the national park system. The park is home to American Bison, white tailed and mule deer, bighorn sheep, prairie dogs, rattlesnakes, fox and wily coyotes. Hawks, owls and occasional eagles grace the open skies above the eroded masterpiece of land below. It is a perfect place for a camera-wielding nature lover like me.

While researching the history of the Badlands, I found an online booklet describing the history of Badlands National Monument. (It did not become a full-fledged park until 1978.) From that booklet, I read that early French-Canadian trappers called the region le mauvaises terres a traverser, which means “bad lands to travel across.” Other traders applied the term “bad lands” to this locality as well as to any section of the prairie country “where roads are difficult….” The Dakota Indians called the region Mako Sica (mako, land; sica, bad). General George A. Custer described the area as a part of hell where the fires burned out.

Despite the seemingly bad press from the history above, I’ve grown to love the area over the years. Any trip I take to the Black Hills is almost certain to include a detour through the Badlands. I’ve learned that some of the best opportunities for photography in the state are found there, particularly in the golden light of evening or early morning. An earlier column of mine was devoted to a single morning of spectacular light on the eastern borders of the park on a Thanksgiving Day morning. I’ve also had good luck seeing and photographing the park’s wildlife. One of my favorite stories of shooting wildlife is the cold February day where I ended up racing a coyote near the Bigfoot pass. The park also has bobcat residents as well as the endangered black-footed ferret. I’ve not been able to see or photograph either of these yet, but those animals are definitely on my bucket list.

My absolute favorite time to be in the park is during and after bad weather. I’ve witnessed some of the most amazing and breathtaking light when a late afternoon or evening summer storm passes through. Twice, I’ve seen the setting sun backlight the billowing clouds and change the landscape to eerie oranges and deep reds. This spring, I was able to see a massive full rainbow form at the panoramic point overview. This rainbow lit up the eastern sky after the sun had set. I’d never seen a rainbow occur so late in the day before. In late August, I happened to be in the park when a late afternoon storm struck. I witnessed the late day sun breaking through the clouds on the west side of park with dramatic rays of light. Later, the setting sun proceeded to paint the retreating remains of the summer storm with fantastic light and detail.

Later in the night I stayed out to shoot to do some stargazing. This part of South Dakota is nearly devoid of light pollution, which means seeing more stars shine in the heavens. I was not disappointed. The Milky Way shown bright against the rugged pinnacles and once again I stood in awe under South Dakota skies amidst the rugged and torn beauty of the Badlands. It was another good day in the Badlands. They almost always are.


Christian Begeman grew up in Isabel and now lives in Sioux Falls. When he’s not working at Midcontinent Communications he is often on the road photographing our prettiest spots around the state. Follow Begeman on his blog. To view Christian’s columns featuring other unique spots in South Dakota’s landscape, visit his landmarks page.