Badlands National Park
national park in South Dakota, United States
Badlands National Park (Lakota: Makȟóšiča) is a national park of the United States in southwestern South Dakota. The park protects 242,756 acres (379.3 sq mi; 982.4 km2) of sharply eroded buttes and pinnacles, along with the largest undisturbed mixed grass prairie in the United States. The National Park Service manages the park, with the South Unit being co-managed with the Oglala Lakota tribe.
Located within the White River drainage, the Badlands Wilderness protects 64,144 acres (100.2 sq mi; 259.6 km2) of the park's North Unit as a designated wilderness area, and is one site where the black-footed ferret, one of the most endangered mammals in the world, was reintroduced to the wild. The South Unit, or Stronghold District, includes sites of 1890s Ghost Dances, a former United States Air Force bomb and gunnery range, and Red Shirt Table, the park's highest point at 3,340 feet (1,020 m).
Authorized as Badlands National Monument on March 4, 1929, it was not established until January 25, 1939. Badlands was redesignated a national park on November 10, 1978. Under the Mission 66 plan, the Ben Reifel Visitor Center was constructed for the monument in 1957–58. The park also administers the nearby Minuteman Missile National Historic Site. The movies Dances with Wolves (1990) and Thunderheart (1992) were partially filmed in Badlands National Park.
“Badlands National Park” enters the record as national park in South Dakota, United States. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Badlands, National and Park can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Badlands National Park” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Badlands, National and Park provides the most credible route into that argument.
Maps, plans, fabric surveys and administrative records can establish how the site’s name, extent and function changed over time. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 25, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q306216. VIAF identifies the subject as 207073253. The Library of Congress control number is sh85010912. Authority coordinates are 43.750, -102.500. 3 of 5 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1929, 1939, 1978 and 1957.
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This entry incorporates text from “Badlands National Park” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.