Badlands, Bison, Broken Promises: Road Trip from Twin Cities to Black Hills

One minute we were driving through gentle, rolling prairie on a scorching South Dakota summer day. The next, the earth dropped away. Striped cliffs, deep canyons, and sharp pinnacles appeared almost out of nowhere.

That was the Badlands, South Dakota; land bad to negotiate, but never bad to behold.

We were exploring southwestern South Dakota, an add-on trip to a reunion my wife had in Minneapolis.

Along the way we took in endless farmland, Native American heritage, geological wonders, engineering marvels, wildlife brought back from the brink, and a few quirky roadside attractions.

Minneapolis: Where a River Built a City

We started in Minneapolis, which, along with St. Paul, forms the Twin Cities that straddle the upper Mississippi River—two cities split by water much like Buda and Pest before they became Budapest.

In the past, wheat from the Great Plains was ground into flour in mills along the riverbank and shipped out across the country.

Companies like Pillsbury and General Mills made Minneapolis the flour-milling capital of the world.

We felt that industrial heritage as we strolled across the historic Stone Arch Bridge, taking in views of the restored mill district.

But once we left Minneapolis, the urban landscape vanished fast.

America’s Breadbasket

From southern Minnesota into South Dakota, we drove through one of the world’s most productive agricultural regions.

Endless fields of corn and soybeans are a reminder of the sheer scale of American farming to those of us from outside the region.

Roadside America

Part of the fun of driving the Midwest is stumbling onto attractions that seemingly could only exist here.

Consider the Corn Palace in Mitchell. Since 1892, local artists have covered its exterior each year with enormous murals made entirely of naturally colored corn, grains, and native grasses.

The building is both corny and a genuine work of craftsmanship.

Then came Wall Drug. What began as a Depression-era pharmacy offering free ice water to thirsty travelers has grown into one of America’s best-known roadside spectacles, its promotion extending across hundreds of catchy billboards for miles in every direction.

We couldn’t drive past without checking out what all those billboards were about. We wandered past an eatery, jackalopes, an animatronic T. rex, giant cowboy boots, souvenir shops, and even a chapel.

The place is chaotic, kitschy, and thoroughly commercial.

Dignity of Earth & Sky

Farther west, overlooking the Missouri River near Chamberlain, we stopped at a 50-foot stainless-steel sculpture of a Native American woman honoring the women of the Lakota and Dakota nations.

It primed us for the Indigenous history of the landscape we were about to experience.

Badlands National Park

We got free admission to the park; it happened to be National Park Service anniversary day, one of those small joys that make a trip.

We drove the Badlands Loop Road, about 40 miles, from east to west, with the landscape unfolding in distinct stages.

First, sharp towering spires and jagged fins hem narrow canyons cut into tan-and-pink rock.

Next, hills banded in mustard-yellow, gold, and reddish-rust.

Finally, panoramic overlooks drop away into eroded basins that abruptly open into grass prairie.

The Black Hills: Nature and History Converge

West of the Badlands rise the Black Hills. For the Lakota, these hills are sacred, and the history here runs deep and complicated.

The Treaty of Fort Laramie promised the region to the Lakota Nation, but the discovery of gold sparked a rush of settlers, leading to the Great Sioux War and the U.S. seizing the Black Hills.

More than a century later, ownership of the Black Hills remains one of the most enduring disputes in American history.

In 1980, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the seizure illegal and ordered compensation. The Lakota Nation has refused the money, insisting on the return of the land rather than a payout.

Nowhere is that contested history more visible than at the region’s most famous landmark.

Mount Rushmore National Memorial

Carved into solid granite, 60-foot portraits of Washington, Jefferson, Teddy Roosevelt, and Lincoln gaze out from the mountain—a remarkable feat of engineering.

Standing at the viewing gallery, it’s hard to grasp the actual scale. From that distance, I’d have guessed less than half their true height. Curious, I asked a woman next to me — she guessed 10 to 15 feet.

We stayed for the lighting ceremony — a short informative film, a ranger’s talk, and then the mountain lit up against the dark.

The rock’s instability has kept Rushmore at four faces ever since, though the idea of a fifth keeps resurfacing. Recently, Trump has said he’d like to see his face added!

Those four faces represent national ideals carved onto the landscape. But what do the Lakota see? A land that remains sacred, carved into without consent.

Mount Rushmore is a perfect example of how people can read the same history in profoundly different ways.

Crazy Horse Memorial

A short distance away is the Crazy Horse Memorial, the deliberate counterpoint to Rushmore. Since 1948, sculptors have been carving Thunderhead Mountain into an image of the Lakota leader who resisted U.S. expansion.

Funded entirely without federal money, it is making slow progress. As of now, the 87-foot face and an outstretched arm are complete.

I found the backstory of Crazy Horse far more moving than that of Rushmore—a Lakota chief’s invitation to a sculptor that grew into an ambitious project — one the sculptor’s children and grandchildren are still carrying forward, decades after his death.

I’d read about both monuments and seen them in photos and video. But standing there made me think much more about the history and the conflict than any photo ever had.

Custer State Park

Near Crazy Horse is Custer State Park, where we drove the Wildlife Loop Road and spotted some of the approximately 1,500 bison that roam there.

For centuries, an estimated 30–60 million bison roamed North America; by the late 1880s, fewer than 1,000 remained.

Conservation programs, such as the managed herds at Custer State Park, helped bring back the defining animal of the American West from the brink of extinction.

Leaving the park, we took the Iron Mountain Road toward Mount Rushmore. Its narrow rock tunnels are engineered so that Mount Rushmore appears perfectly framed in the distance as you drive through—a final, striking view before turning back east toward Minneapolis.

Back Home

I returned with a deeper appreciation of the landscape we had traversed—not just the geology, but the history layered underneath it.

A short trip, but a surprisingly rich one.