Badlands National Park Word Search

Tap a letter to start, then tap the last letter of the word to find it. Or tap a word in the bar to hunt for it — clues are below the grid.

• PRAIRIE The mixed-grass sea the buttes rise out of. Bison, bighorn sheep and black-footed ferrets all live on it.
• BADLANDS Also a lowercase geology word: soft sedimentary rock that erodes into ridges and canyons. There is badlands country in Wyoming, Utah, Canada and Argentina too.
• BISON Frequently seen from Sage Creek Rim Road, the gravel route along the north edge of the wilderness.
• FOSSIL Most of the park's are mammals from 37 to 28 million years ago. No dinosaurs.
• EROSION One of the two processes that made this landscape. The other is deposition, which stacked the rock like a layer cake.
• BUTTE A peak left standing after the Cheyenne and White Rivers carved away everything around it.
• PRONGHORN Holds 55 miles an hour for half a mile, and sheds the outer sheath of its horns every year.
• BIGHORN About 250 live in the park. The first 22 were brought from Pikes Peak, Colorado, in 1964.
• TURKEY Feeds in open meadows during the day and roosts up in a tree at night.
• KILLDEER A shorebird that nests on bare open ground, nowhere near a shore. Easier to hear than to see.
• LAKOTA The nation whose name for this place, mako sica, became the English word Badlands.
• MUDSTONE One of the rock types stacked here, along with sandstone, siltstone, claystone, limestone, volcanic ash and shale.
• RANGER Leads the geology walk at Door Trail, the fossil talks, and the night sky program.
• LADDER Notch Trail climbs one, roped to the cliff face, on the way to the view at the Notch.
• LOOP SD 240, the paved road through the North Unit, strings more than a dozen overlooks together. One to two hours to drive.