The White River Badlands: Its History and Characters

Dubbed Mako Sica by the Lakotas and les Mauvaises Terres by the French, South Dakota’s White River Badlands is famous for its stunning vistas of saw-toothed ridges, dry-wash canyons, and looming mesas and pinnacles, which attract millions of visitors to Badlands National Park every year. Over the centuries, this harsh, unforgiving environment has also enticed generations of American Indians, fur traders, trailblazers, would-be tycoons, paleontologists, gold miners, homesteaders, and ranchers, who have either found refuge here or tried, and often failed, to eke out a living.

The White River Badlands: Its History and Characters examines each of these attempts to lay claim to the Badlands. Philip S. Hall, son of multigenerational Badlands ranchers, has spent over half a century exploring and researching this spectacular, forbidding landscape and those intrepid souls who have called it home. As the next chapter in its history is written, will the Badlands prove to be as immutable as it seems, impervious to the conceits of man? You be the judge.

Philip S. Hall earned his Ph.D. from the University of Montana in 1972. During his forty-year professional career, he assisted teachers in Montana, Minnesota, the Dakotas, and Wyoming to help children with debilitating learning and behavior problems find success in the classroom. As an academic, he helped graduate students become competent school psychologists. In the process, he wrote or co-authored ten books, including three on the history of southwestern South Dakota and the widely used book Educating Children with Oppositional Defiant Disorder. He was a featured presenter at numerous conferences across the United States and Canada. His latest book is From Wounded Knee to the Gallows: The Life and Trials of Lakota Chief Two Strikes (University of Oklahoma Press, 2020). The White River Badlands: Its History and Characters is his final book.