Theodore Roosevelt first visited the North Dakota Badlands in 1883. He was an avid hunter and conservationist. Back in the 1800s, he was very aware of the devastating effects of America depleting it’s natural resources.
After visiting the pine tree covered Black Hills in western South Dakota, we headed east through the grass covered prairies to the Badlands. French fur purveyors called the Badlands “les mauvaises terror a traverser”, meaning “bad land to traverse”. The Lakota referred to the area as “Mako Sica”, also meaning land bad.
