Badlands

The national park that I chose to do my research paper on is called Badlands National Park. Badlands National Park is located in Interior, South Dakota. The park is exactly 242,756 acres, these acres consist of sharply eroded buttes, pinnacles and spires mixed in with the largest undistributed mixed grass prairie in the United States. And like all parks available for this project, the National Park Service manages the park.

I have never got a chance to visit Badlands National Park. The main reason that I chose this is because of all of the history as well as the vast amounts of wildlife within the park. Another thing that drew me to this topic was all of the different landscapes that encompass that park. The way the weather in this area of the United States can shape rock formations as well as just the landscape in general is something that intrigues me.

Badlands national park has a lot of rich history when it comes to Native American tribes as well as the scenic land structures. But to me the biggest draw would have to be the rich history that comes along with the park. In my research I have found that 3 different tribes of Native Americans have inhabited these lands, those tribes are the Lakota, paleo-Indians, and the Arikara. These three tribes’ descendant people now live in North Dakota as part of the Three Affiliated Tribes. Archaeological records combined with oral traditions indicate that these people camped in secluded valleys where fresh water and game were available year round. Eroding out of the stream banks today are the rocks and charcoal of their campfires, as well as the arrowheads and tools they used to butcher bison, rabbits, and other game (NPS,2008). Along with this being a place of rich history for native Americans, there have also been an abundance of findings that have to do with fossils found in the White River Badlands. These were first discovered by the Lakota, they found large fossilized bones, fossilized seashells as well as...