Theodore Roosevelt National Park

In September of 2020 I spent a week in the Theodore Roosevelt National Park. Located in western North Dakota. The park is located where the northern great plains meet the little Missouri badlands, and offers grand vistas of this rugged landscape. The park is made up of 3 units, The North Unit, South Unit, and The Elk horn Ranch Unit. The South Unit is located just off I94, near Medora, ND. The North Unit is about 80 mile to the North, with the Elk Horn Unit in-between. Grasslands and Prairie dominate the landscape with bluffs overlooking the Little Missouri.

The landscape we see today began about 65 million years ago, when layers of sediments from ancient rivers were deposited, and over time became the layers of rock we see today.

A ancient river in a similar location to today's Little Missouri was one of the rivers responsible for depositing these layers of sediment. The course of today's little Missouri River is a result of glaciers which forced the river change course.

The river on it's new course easily cut through the soft rock and clay deposits creating the landscape we see today.

The Little Missouri River is still the dominant force in the creation of badlands landscape  its power is evident in every aspect of the landscape.

From patterns in the soft clay, to the buttes and canyons that characterize the badlands, the river is continuously sculpting and changing the landscape.

"The river flows in long sigmoid curves through an alluvial valley of no great width. The amount of this alluvial land enclosed by a single bend is called a bottom, which may be either covered with cotton-wood trees or else be simply a great grass meadow. From the edges of the valley the land rises abruptly in steep high buttes whose crests are sharp and jagged. This broken country extends back from the river for many miles, and has been called always, by Indians, French voyageurs, and American trappers alike, the "Bad Lands"..."

Theodore Roosevelt

Rain and water are not the only forces at work in shaping the landscape. Lightning strikes and prairie fires can ignite coal beds, These coal beds can burn for years, baking the rock into a kind of natural hard brick that is more erosion resistant than the surrounding unbaked rock layers creating the red cap stones on many of the buttes.

One of the most unique geological formations  in the Little Missouri badlands are cannonball concretions. These large spherical stones sitting in the landscape seem to appear out of nowhere. But are formed when mineral rich water seeping through the porous layers of the badlands are deposited in gaps in the sediment. Almost like a pearl the concretion grows as layers of sediment are continually added before it is exposed by the erosion of the butte.