Badlands National Park

The Lakota called it *makȟóšiča* — bad lands — and they meant it as a practical warning, not a slight. Extreme temperatures, scarce water, rugged terrain: this place does not accommodate you. What the 244,000-acre park protects is one of the world's richest fossil beds, mixed-grass prairie where bison and black-footed ferrets live, and the South Unit's Stronghold District — Oglala Lakota land, co-managed with the tribe, where Ghost Dances were held in the 1890s. The United States promised this territory to the Sioux forever in 1868. By 1889, that promise was broken.