These weirdly eroded steep buttes with deep gullies were literally “bad lands” to travel across. The otherworldly slopes, composed of bands of soft sediments and volcanic ash, constrast with the abundant life of the surrounding mixed-grass prairie. Bison, deer, antelope, prairie dogs, and a reintroduced population of black-footed ferrets can be sighted, while Eocene and Oligocene fossil mammals erode out of the hills.



