Help Raise $100,000 for the National Park Foundation

“The aspects of the Dakota Badlands have more spiritual quality to impart to the mind of America than anything else in it made by man’s God.”

— Frank Lloyd Wright*,
architect

Badlands National Park and Mount Rushmore National Memorial

South Dakota’s Badlands National Park, which got its name from the Lakota Sioux description of the rugged terrain (mako, “land,” and sica, “bad”), contains 244,000 acres of windswept prairies, sharply eroded buttes, deep canyons and jagged spires. Mount Rushmore’s 60-foot-tall presidential heads are 100 miles west.

An Extraordinary Setting

Established first as a national monument in 1929, then as a national park in 1978, Badlands has a stark, rugged beauty that continues to cast a spell over visitors. Rich in fossils, the land is considered the birthplace of vertebrate paleontology, the study of prehistoric mammals. Mount Rushmore, encompassing 1,280 acres, came under National Park Service jurisdiction in 1933.

Most Famous Feature

The 64,000-acre Badlands Wilderness Area, the largest expanse of wild prairie in the National Park System, is home to 600 bison, along with other wildlife. Presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln are immortalized at Mount Rushmore.

Best-Kept Secret

At Badlands, the “Pig Dig” is an excavation site where summer visitors can watch paleontologists search for fossils. At Mount Rushmore, a small cave, called the Hall of Records, is located behind the heads. The monument's sculptor started drilling in 1938 but abandoned that area the following year.

*®2008 Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, Scottsdale, AZ/Artists Rights Society(ARS), NY