Part 1

Cover Photo: THE CASTLE, five miles west of Cedar Pass and just west of Norbeck Pass, is a spectacular saw-tooth ridge which was named by early local ranchers. The spires rise more than 200 feet above the Fossil Exhibit Trail (see Figure 28) and approximately 450 feet above the lower grassland plains which are out of view on the left. The ridge is an eroded remnant of rock layers which formerly covered Badlands National Monument and surrounding areas.

HISTORY OF BADLANDS NATIONAL MONUMENT and The White River (Big) Badlands of South Dakota

by Ray H. Mattison and Robert A. Grom

edited by Joanne W. Stockert

Bulletin No. 1

Published 1968 by the Badlands Natural History Association Badlands National Monument Interior, South Dakota 57750

Printed at Rapid City, South Dakota, U.S.A. By Espe Printing Company First Edition Library of Congress Catalog Number: 68-19055

This booklet is published by the Badlands Natural History Association, a nonprofit corporation dedicated to assisting the National Park Service in its scientific, educational, historical, and interpretive activities at Badlands National Monument. Organized in April 1959, the association is incorporated under the laws of the State of South Dakota. It is recognized by the National Park Service, United States Department of the Interior, as an official cooperating organization. A list of mail-sales items handled by the association may be obtained free by sending a card or letter to the address shown on the title page.

The Badlands Natural History Association wishes to thank the many local people who have contributed their know-how and resources in making this publication possible.

CONTENTS

Introduction 7 Chronology of Badlands National Monument and the White River (Big) Badlands 9 Early Indians and Explorers 11 The Settlers Come 23 Legislation for Park Establishment 27 The Depression Years 37 Early Development of the National Monument 43 Mission 66 Development 59

APPENDIX A Annual Visitor Use, 1938-1967 65 B Custodians and Superintendents of Badlands National Monument 67 C Picture Credits 69 D Footnotes and References 71 E Map of Badlands National Monument 79

INTRODUCTION

In 1951 the National Park Service (NPS) launched the concept of developing a documented history for each unit of the national park system. Known since 1984 as “park” histories, the studies were to be general in scope, spanning the history of each area with emphasis on park origin, legislation, visitor use, and all aspects of management.

Although sporadic research on local area history was done by the NPS in the 1950’s and early 1960’s, comprehensive research studies that finally led to a park history for Badlands National Monument did not start until 1964. In that year Ray H. Mattison, former Visitor Services Coordinator and Historian for the Midwest Region of the NPS, began the project by selecting some 300 pages of reference materials from the National Archives. Additional bibliographical materials were located in the Congressional Record, NPS historical files, and elsewhere. Former Chief Park Naturalist Robert A. Grom of Badlands National Monument did much in gathering photographs, maps, and historical data, and in writing additions and revising parts of the various drafts prepared by Mattison. By the end of 1965 a manuscript was completed, but publication was delayed. Mattison retired from the NPS in 1965 and Grom was transferred in May 1966.

In 1967 more historical evidence came to light which resulted in the editing, updating, and expanding of the 1965 manuscript. Much of this work was done by Joanne W. Stockert, wife of the Chief Park Naturalist. Copies of all documents and references not found locally but which were used as bibliography in the final manuscript were obtained for the files or library of Badlands National Monument. For those who are interested in learning how this national monument has evolved to the present time, the Badlands Natural History Association has published this history with the hope that it will provide a basic source of historical information on Badlands National Monument.

John W. Stockert Executive Secretary Badlands Natural History Association

February 19, 1968

CHRONOLOGY OF BADLANDS NATIONAL MONUMENT AND THE WHITE RIVER (BIG) BADLANDS OF SOUTH DAKOTA

1823—First known party of white men, led by fur-trader Jedediah Smith, passed through the White River Badlands. 1849—First scientific party, under Dr. John Evans, collected paleontological specimens from the Badlands. 1855—The General William Harney Expedition, en route from Fort Laramie to Fort Pierre, passed through the present national monument. 1868—Present western South Dakota reserved to the Sioux by Fort Laramie Treaty. 1874—Dr. O. C. Marsh, distinguished Yale scientist, and party visited Badlands region. 1890—Much of the Badlands restored to public domain to be opened eventually to white settlement. A band of Sioux, under Chief Big Foot, passed through the area of the present national monument en route to Wounded Knee, where many were killed in battle with the army. 1907—The Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul Railroad built through Interior near southern boundary of area, The Chicago and North Western Railway constructed through Philip and Wall near northern boundary. 1909—The South Dakota Legislature petitioned Congress to set aside a township in the Badlands region for a national park. 1922—Senator Peter Norbeck introduced the first bill in Congress to make a portion of the Badlands a national park. 1929—Badlands National Monument, comprising some 50,830 acres, authorized by Congress. 1936—Law enacted authorizing enlargement of the proposed national monument to 250,000 acres by presidential proclamation. 1939—Badlands National Monument, comprising about 150,000 acres, established by presidential proclamation. 1952—Congress authorized reduction in size of national monument. Area reduced by about 27,000 acres. 1957—Area further reduced by approximately 11,000 acres, leaving the national monument with an official acreage of 111,529.82 acres. 1959—Visitor center completed. Badlands National Monument dedicated by Secretary of the Interior Fred A. Seaton. 1963—Bison reintroduced to the Badlands. 1964—Bighorn reintroduced to the Badlands. Cedar Pass Lodge acquired by the National Park Service.

EARLY INDIANS AND EXPLORERS

Little is known of the prehistory of the region which comprises Badlands National Monument. The time of man’s entry into the Badlands-Black Hills region is unknown. The oldest Indian site found in western South Dakota is in the Angostura Basin south of Hot Springs. Studies indicate it to be a little more than 7,000 years old. Evidence shows that these early people were big-game hunters who preyed upon mammoth, large bison, and other animals that lived in the lush post-glacial grasslands.[1]

Firepits containing Indian artifacts have been found in the Pinnacles area of the national monument. Radiocarbon studies leave little doubt that hunters were already using this site by 900 A.D.[2] More archeological research will probably show that man hunted and made his home in the Badlands long before that date.[3]

Since about 1000 AD. the Black Hills area has been occupied by a number of nomadic Indian tribes. Some of these subsisted primarily by hunting, while others lived on local food plants. These tribes probably belonged to the Caddoan, Athabascan, Kiowa, and Shoshonean linguistic groups.[4]

During the 18th century, parties of Arikara from the Missouri River went on buffalo hunts as far west as the Black Hills. There they met with the Comanche, Arapaho, Kiowa, and Cheyenne at trading fairs where they acquired horses. The Arikara, in turn, traded horses with the Teton Sioux who had been slowly migrating south and westward since about 1670 from the headwaters of the Mississippi River. Around 1775 the Oglala and Brule, tribes of the Teton Sioux, moved west of the Missouri River to occupy respectively the Bad River country (around the present town of Philip, S.D.) and the region along the White River south of the Badlands. Because of their move from a timbered area to a plains region, the Sioux underwent great adjustment. As the result of acquiring guns from the whites and horses from other tribes, the Sioux became primarily a nomadic people, dependent on buffalo for sustenance.[5]

For more than a century prior to 1763, the upper Missouri Valley, including what is today Badlands National Monument, was under French control. Under terms of the Treaty of Paris of 1763 French possessions west of the Mississippi River were ceded to Spain. Spain returned the area, known as Louisiana, to France in 1800 in the secret Treaty of San Ildefonso.[6] In 1803 the entire region, which included all of the present states of Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, Nebraska, and South Dakota, plus parts of eight other states, was purchased by the United States from France for $15,000,000.

The early French-Canadian trappers called the region, which includes the present day national monument, Les Mauvaises terres a traverser, which translated means “bad lands to travel across.” Other traders applied the term “bad lands” to this locality as well as to any section of the prairie country “where roads are difficult....” The Dakota Indians called the region Mako Sica (mako, land; sica, bad).[7]

Father Pierre-Jean de Smet called the White River Mankizita-Watpa. This Indian word commonly means “white earth river,” or more literally, “smoking land river.” The priest attributed the name to the river water which he wrote was “impregnated with a whitish slime.”[8]

Early American trappers and traders called the attention of the world to the unusual geological features and extensive fossil deposits of the Badlands along the White River. The earliest known description of the region, believed to be the White River Badlands, is that of James Clyman, a member of Jedediah Smith’s 11-man party, who passed through the area in 1823. Clyman described it as

... a tract of county whare no vegetation of any kind existed beeing worn into knobs and gullies and extremely uneven ... a loose grayish coloured soil verry soluble in water running thick as it could move of a pale whitish coular and remarkably adhesive ... there [came] on a misty rain while we were in this pile of ashes [bad-lands west of the South Fork of the Cheyenne River] and it loded down our horses feet (feet) in great lumps it looked a little remarkable that not a foot of level land could be found the narrow revines going in all manner of directions and the cobble mound[s] of a regular taper from top to bottom all of them of the percise same angle and the tops sharp ... the whole of this region is moveing to the Misourie River as fast as rain and thawing of Snow can carry it....[9]

When Maximilian, Prince of Wied, returned to Fort Pierre in 1834 after making his historic journey up the Missouri with Charles Bodmer, William Laidlaw, the trader of the fort, gave him a description of the Badlands. The German prince wrote:

... I much regretted that I could not remain long enough to visit the interesting tract of the Mauvaises Terres, which is some days’ journey from hence. Mr. Laidlow [sic], who had been there in the winter, gave me a description of it. It is two days’ journey, he said, south-west of Fort Pierre, and forms, in the level prairie, an accumulation of hills of most remarkable forms, looking like fortresses, churches, villages and ruins, and doubtless consisting of the same sand-stone as the conformations near the Stone Walls. He further stated that the bighorn abounds in that tract.[10]

Father de Smet visited the Badlands region in 1848. He described it as

... the most extraordinary of any I have met in my journeys through the wilderness.... Viewed at a distance, these lands exhibit the appearance of extensive villages and ancient castles, but under forms so extraordinary, and so capricious a style of architecture, that we might consider them as appertaining to some new world, or ages far remote.[11]

The Jesuit noted further, “The industry of the settler will never succeed in cultivating and planting this fluctuating and sterile soil....” However, he believed that the fossil deposits in the region would be of interest to the geologist and the naturalist.[12]

In the 1840’s the reports of fossil remains in the White River Badlands aroused the curiosity of scientific circles in the East. In the fall of 1843(?) Alexander Culbertson, well-known fur trader of the American Fur Company, made a trip from Fort Pierre to Fort Laramie. Either on this particular trip or succeeding ones, he made a collection of fossils and bones in the Badlands.[14] This collection provided the basis for the first scientific description of a Badlands fossil. The description was written by Dr. Hiram A. Prout of St. Louis, published in 1846, and printed again in 1847 with greater detail. The paper described a lower-jaw fragment of a large rhinoceros-like animal which later was given the common name titanothere by Dr. Joseph Leidy in 1852. Another fossil from this same collection, a fragment of an ancestral camel, was also described in 1847 by Dr. Leidy, who in a few years became the authority on Badlands fossils and an outstanding paleontologist.[15] In the fall of 1847 the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia became the first known institution to receive a collection of fossils from this region.[16]

In 1848 another deposit to this institution, made by Culbertson’s father, Joseph, included “a new fossil genus of Mammalia, found near the ‘Black Hills’....”[17] These deposits aroused such interest that in 1849 United States Geologist David Dale Owen sent his assistant, Dr. John Evans, to the Badlands.[18]

Dr. Evans, accompanied by a fellow geologist, “five Canadian travelers who were to be our muleteers and cooks, and finally an Indian guide and an interpreter,”[19] set out westward from Fort Pierre after traveling by steamboat from St. Louis. Following five days of overland travel they reached the Badlands. One of the party was a Frenchman, E. de Girardin, a soldier of fortune employed as an artist on the expedition. His story of the trip was published in 1864 in a French travel magazine, Le Tour du Monde. After climbing a hill about a hundred meters (about 330 feet) high, he beheld “the strangest and most incomprehensible view.”[20] (See Figure 4.)

At the horizon, at the end of an immense plain and tinted rose by the reflection of the setting sun, a city in ruins appears to us, an immense city surrounded by walls and bulwarks, filled by a palace crowned with gigantic domes and monuments of the most fantastic and bizarre architecture. At intervals on a soil white as snow rise embattled chateaus of brick red, pyramids with their sharp-pointed summits topped with shapeless masses which seem to rock in the wind, a pillar of a hundred meters rises in the midst of this chaos of ruins like a gigantic lighthouse.[21]

De Girardin was also impressed by the large deposits of fossil remains in the area. “The soil is formed here and there of a thick bed of petrified bones,” he wrote, “sometimes in a state perfectly preserved, sometimes broken and reduced to dust.” The party discovered “petrified turtles,” some of which were “admirably preserved and weighing up to 150 pounds....” The expedition also found “a head of a rhinoceros equally petrified, and the jawbone of a dog or wolf of a special kind, furnished with all its teeth.” At places the scientists located “heaps of teeth and scraps of broken jawbones; ... bones and vertebrae of the oreodon, the mastdon [sic] and the elephant.” However, after exploring for three days in the region without having discovered “the elephants, the buffaloes, and the petrified men of which they had spoken to us so much,” the party began its journey back to Fort Pierre.[22]

Dr. Evans himself was not only impressed by the scenic qualities of the Badlands but by the scientific importance of the region as well. He wrote:

After leaving the locality on Sage Creek, affording the above-mentioned fossils, crossing that stream, and proceeding in the direction of White River, about twelve or fifteen miles, the formation of the Mauvaises Terres proper bursts into view, disclosing as here depicted, one of the most extraordinary and picturesque sights that can be found in the whole Missouri country.

From the high prairies, that rise in the background, by a series of terraces or benches, towards the spurs of the Rocky Mountains, the traveller looks down into an extensive valley, that may be said to constitute a world of its own, and which appears to have been formed, partly by an extensive vertical fault, partly by the long-continued influence of the scooping action of denudation.

The width of this valley may be about thirty miles, and its whole length about ninety, as it stretches away westwardly, towards the base of the gloomy and dark range of mountains known as the Black Hills. Its most depressed portion, three hundred feet below the general level of the surrounding country, is clothed with scanty grasses, and covered by a soil similar to that of the higher ground.

To the surrounding country, however, the Mauvaises Terres present the most striking contrast. From the uniform, monotonous, open prairie, the traveller suddenly descends, one or two hundred feet, into a valley that looks as if it had sunk away from the surrounding world; leaving standing, all over it, thousands of abrupt, irregular, prismatic, and columnar masses, frequently capped with irregular pyramids, and stretching up to a height of from one to two hundred feet, or more.

So thickly are these natural towers studded over the surface of this extraordinary region, that the traveller threads his way through deep, confined, labyrinthine passages, not unlike the narrow, irregular streets and lanes of some quaint old town of the European Continent. Viewed in the distance, indeed, these rocky piles, in their endless succession, assume the appearance of massive, artificial structures, decked out with all the accessories of buttress and turret, arched doorway and clustered shaft, pinnacle, and finial, and tapering spire.

One might almost imagine oneself approaching some magnificent city of the dead, where the labour and the genius of forgotten nations had left behind them a multitude of monuments of art and skill.[23]

Dr. Evans was equally awed by the rich paleontological deposits of the Badlands region. After describing the extreme heat of the region, he continued:

At every step, objects of the highest interest present themselves. Embedded in the debris, lie strewn, in the greatest profusion, organic relics of extinct animals. All speak of a vast freshwater deposit of the early Tertiary Period, and disclose the former existence of most remarkable races, that roamed about in bygone ages high up in the Valley of the Missouri, towards the sources of its western tributaries; where now pastures the big-horned Ovis montana, the shaggy buffalo or American bison, and the elegant and slenderly-constructed antelope.

Every specimen as yet brought from the Bad Lands, proves to be of species that became exterminated before the mammoth and mastodon lived, and differ in their specific character, not alone from all living animals, but also from all fossils obtained even from cotemporaneous [sic] geological formations elsewhere.[24]

Dr. Evans drew a map (See Figure 3) of Mauvaises Terres (Bad Lands) and Dr. Joseph Leidy prepared a catalog as well as sketches of the most significant fossils the Owen Geological Survey Party found on its journey to the region.[25]

In 1850 Spencer F. Baird of the Smithsonian Institution arranged for Thaddeus Culbertson, a younger brother of Alexander Culbertson, to visit the Badlands under the auspices of the Institution. Born in 1823 at Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, young Culbertson, a student at Princeton Theological Seminary, set out with his brother, Alexander, from Chambersburg in mid-February. The brothers left St. Louis by steamboat on March 19 and arrived at Fort Pierre May 4. With his brother supplying the equipment, Thaddeus and two others set out from the fur-trading establishment three days later. On May 11 they encamped at Sage Creek in the White River Badlands.[26]

Culbertson, too, was very much impressed by the Badlands as he approached them:

The road now lay over hills which became more steep and frequent as we approached the Bad Lands. These occasionally appeared in the distance and never before did I see anything that so resembled a large city; so complete was this deception that I could point out the public buildings; one appeared to have a large dome which might be the town Hall; another would have a large angular, cone shape top, which would suggest the court house or some magnificent buildings for public purposes: then would appear a long row of palaces, great in number and superb in all their arrangements. Indeed the thought frequently occurred as we rode along that at a distance this portion of the grounds looked like a city of palaces—everything arranged upon the grandest scale and adapted for the habitation, not of pigmies such as now inhabit the earth, but of giants such as would be fit to rule over the immense animals whose remains are still found there.[27]

Culbertson was also moved by the complete desolation of the Badlands:

Fancy yourself on the hottest day in summer in the hottest spot of such a place without water—without an animal and scarce an insect astir—without a single flower to speak pleasant things to you and you will have some idea of the utter loneliness of the Bad Lands.[28]