badland, area cut and eroded by many deep, tortuous gullies with intervening saw-toothed divides. The gullies extend from main rivers back to tablelands about 150 m (500 feet) and higher. The gully bottoms increase in gradient from almost flat near the main rivers to nearly vertical at the edges of the tablelands. Because the rocks are not uniform in character, differences in erosion result in stair-step profiles. The joining and separating of the gullies cause many isolated irregular spires, small flat-topped buttes, or mesas, and produce a landscape of jagged, fluted, and seemingly inaccessible hills.
Badlands develop in arid to semiarid areas where the bedrock is poorly cemented and rainfall generally occurs as cloudbursts. The dry, granular surface material and light vegetation is swept from the slopes during showers, leaving the gullies bare.
The term badland was first applied to a part of southwestern South Dakota, which French-Canadian trappers called the mauvaises terres pour traverser (the “bad lands to cross”); later it was applied to other areas with similarly eroded topography. The South Dakota Badlands comprise an area of approximately 2,000 square miles (5,200 square km) that stretches east and west for 100 miles (160 km) along the Jackson-Washabaugh and Pennington-Shannon county lines. The Badlands National Monument embraces the greater part of the rugged terrain in Jackson and Pennington counties.