50 free Badlands National Park trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Badlands National Park trivia quiz covers the sharply eroded buttes and pinnacles of southwestern South Dakota and the largest undisturbed mixed-grass prairie in the United States that surrounds them. Questions cover the geology (the Pierre Shale, the White River Group, the Yellow Mounds and the inch a year the rock loses to summer storms), the world-famous Oligocene fossil beds, and the wildlife, from the reintroduced bison herd to the black-footed ferret that was once declared extinct. The human story gets equal weight: the Lakota name that gives the park its own, the broken 1868 treaty, the Ghost Dance on Stronghold Table and the road to Wounded Knee, the Dust Bowl homesteaders, the World War II gunnery range that still litters the South Unit with ordnance, the Cold War missile silos next door, Dances with Wolves, and the drugstore in Wall that built an empire on free ice water. Questions run from easy to expert with the difficulty shown on each one. Every answer was checked against a reference page and each question carries its citation. If you enjoy this one, try our Yellowstone and US National Parks quizzes next.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which famous carved memorial lies about 60 miles west of Wall, the park's gateway town?
Mount Rushmore
Its opening in the 1930s sent a stream of thirsty motorists past Wall on the way to the Black Hills.
Q 02Besides eroded buttes and pinnacles, the park protects the largest undisturbed example of what in the US?
Mixed-grass prairie
Grasses there range from ankle-high to waist-high, a transition zone between the wetter tallgrass prairies to the east and the shortgrass plains to the west.
Q 03The Lakota name for the area, Makȟóšiča, translates literally as what?
Bad lands
French-Canadian trappers called it 'les mauvaises terres pour traverser', bad lands to travel through; extreme temperatures, no water and rugged terrain earned both names.
Q 04The park's South Unit, or Stronghold District, is co-managed by the NPS and which tribe?
Oglala Lakota
The unit lies on the Pine Ridge Reservation; plans for a tribally run national park there have been discussed for years but have not yet happened.
Q 05Which president signed the 1929 law authorising Badlands National Monument on his final day in office?
Calvin Coolidge
The conditions included buying up private land and building a 30-mile highway, so it took a full decade before Franklin Roosevelt could proclaim the monument in 1939.
Q 06In which year was Badlands redesignated from a national monument to a national park?
1978
Its decade-long creation in the 1930s ran in parallel with the carving of the presidents in the Black Hills, part of a federal push to develop western South Dakota for tourism.
Q 07What is the highest point in the park?
Red Shirt Table
At 3,340 feet it stands in the South Unit; the Sharps Formation, the youngest layer, caps the park's highest peaks.
Q 08The park's main visitor center is named after Ben Reifel. Who was he?
The first Lakota elected to Congress
A Sicangu Lakota born in a log cabin on the Rosebud Reservation, he served five terms as a Republican from 1961 to 1971 and was the only Native American in Congress during the 1960s.
Q 09The Ben Reifel Visitor Center was built in 1957–58 under which National Park Service programme?
Mission 66
The ten-year plan aimed to modernise park facilities by the Service's 50th anniversary in 1966.
Q 10Which 1990 Best Picture winner was partly filmed in the park?
Dances with Wolves
Kevin Costner's epic won seven Oscars; the bison hunt was shot at a buffalo ranch near Fort Pierre.
Q 11Where was the 1868 treaty promising the Badlands would forever belong to the Sioux signed?
Fort Laramie
The government broke it in 1889; a 1980 Supreme Court ruling awarded compensation, but the Sioux have refused to take the money.
Q 12One of the last Ghost Dances of 1890 was held on which flat-topped mesa in the park's South Unit?
Stronghold Table
The area is revered by the Sioux as a ceremonial site rather than a place to live; the dancers returned to Pine Ridge as winter closed in.
Q 13The Ghost Dance movement of 1890 followed the vision of which Paiute prophet?
Wovoka
Also known as Jack Wilson, he said he fell into a trance during the solar eclipse of 1 January 1889 and saw the dead return and the white man vanish.
Q 21The colourful band called the Yellow Mounds is what, geologically?
A deeply weathered ancient soil
It formed on the old marine rocks before the river sediments of the White River Group buried it between about 37 and 23 million years ago.
Q 22Roughly how fast do the bare Badlands slopes erode in summer thunderstorms?
About an inch a year
The loose White River sediments soak up little rain, so brief downpours strip them fast; the landscape is only about two million years old and still actively wearing away.
Q 23The ash beds preserved in the upper rock layers came from volcanic eruptions in which region?
The Great Basin
Q 14Ghost Dance followers wore special shirts believed to have what power?
To stop bullets
The prophecy said the buffalo and the dead would return; the movement collapsed after the killings of December 1890.
Q 15Chief Spotted Elk's band crossed the Badlands Wall in December 1890 on the way to which tragedy?
Wounded Knee Massacre
Nearly 300 Lakota and 30 soldiers died; it was the last major clash between Plains Indians and the army until the American Indian Movement standoff on the same ground in 1973.
Q 16Which people, now part of North Dakota's Three Affiliated Tribes, hunted the Badlands before the Lakota?
Arikara
Charcoal from their campfires and the tools they used to butcher bison and rabbits still erode out of the stream banks.
Q 17The Badlands hold the richest known deposits of mammal fossils from which geological epoch?
Oligocene
They give a glimpse of life about 33 million years ago; the Lakota had already deduced from the bones and shells that the land was once under water.
Q 18Physician Hiram Prout attributed the first published Badlands fossil, an 1846 jaw fragment, to what creature?
A Paleotherium
Joseph Leidy renamed it Titanotherium prouti in 1849; by 1854, 77 of the 84 fossil species known in North America came from the White River Badlands.
Q 19Which Yale professor visited in 1870 and pioneered better ways to extract near-complete skeletons?
O. C. Marsh
The South Dakota School of Mines has sent researchers almost every year since 1899 and remains one of the most active institutions working the beds.
Q 20The park's oldest rock, the Pierre Shale, was laid down 75 million years ago at the bottom of what?
The floor of a shallow inland sea
The Western Interior Seaway left fossils of ammonites and mosasaurs; it drained away as the Rockies rose and was gone by the time of the dinosaur extinction.
Repeated eruptions to the west dusted the floodplains; the Brule Formation between them dates to about 32 to 26 million years ago.
Q 24Which critically endangered mammal, once declared extinct, was reintroduced to the Badlands Wilderness?
Black-footed ferret
About 100 now live in the park's Conata Basin; the species was written off in 1979 until a ranch dog in Meeteetse, Wyoming turned one up in 1981.
Q 25The park's reintroduced ferrets depend almost entirely on which animal for food and shelter?
Prairie dogs
One scat study found they made up 87% of the ferret's diet; the ferrets also raise their young in the burrows, which is why sylvatic plague in the towns is so dangerous to them.
Q 26The park's bison herd began in 1963 with 50 animals shipped from which other national park?
Theodore Roosevelt
The herd has grown past 1,200; in 2019 its range was expanded by 22,000 acres with 43 miles of new fencing.
Q 27Which endangered bird has a small, non-self-sustaining wild population in the park?
Whooping crane
It shares the endangered list with the ferret; more common park birds include the black-billed magpie.
Q 28The most common grass in the park is also South Dakota's official state grass. What is it?
Western wheatgrass
It grows one to three feet tall; trees and shrubs occur, but grasses dominate the whole landscape.
Q 29Which of these animals is NOT on the park's wildlife list?
Grizzly bear
Bison, elk, coyotes, bobcats, porcupines and prairie rattlesnakes are all present; the bighorn population has climbed to about 233.
Q 30The Badlands Wilderness, designated in 1976, covers about what fraction of the park?
A quarter
There are no designated trails and camping is allowed anywhere; hunting, bicycles and any motorised vehicles are banned under the 1964 Wilderness Act.