Last Updated: September 14, 2026
The Badlands are almost exactly halfway through their existence. Water began carving them out of the prairie around 500,000 years ago, and at the current rate of about an inch a year, the Park Service expects them to be gone in roughly another 500,000. Everything in the photographs below is temporary. That is not a melancholy thought so much as a useful one, because it explains why the place looks the way it does — nothing here is hard enough to last.
