The Badlands is a region of the U.S. which stretches through South Dakota and North Dakota. It's marked by rugged terrain and rock formations that resemble a science fiction landscape of another world! These formations take on the shapes of domes, twisted canyons and slanted walls, often striped in different colors.

Most of this region is protected as the 242,000 acre Badlands National Park in the south-western corner of South Dakota, about 80 miles east of Rapid City, South Dakota. It is the most famous of the Badlands areas, and draws about one million visitors annually. Fifty percent of Badlands National Park is co-managed with the Oglala Lakota Nation to form the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.