Window Trail - 0.3 Miles Round-Trip

This short boardwalk-trail leads to sensational easterly views of the Badland Wall. Visitors will enjoy unimpeded vistas of dramatically carved spires, pinnacles, knives, fins, gullies and canyons.

The unforgiving impact of erosion is quite evident from this memorable viewpoint. Lighting is best in the late afternoon.

Stretching for nearly 60 miles east to west, The Badland Wall we see today was carved over the past 500,000 years by three river systems and millennia of rain, wind and exposure.

Predating and setting the stage for such a rapid occurrence, The White River (south of the park), eroded a scarp - a long steep slope or cliff at the edge of a plateau or ridge - in the Lower Plain.

Subsequent storms over the next 5 million years eroded away at this 'Wall-in-the-making', causing its crest to recede northward away from the river and toward the upper-lower plains. Erosion of the Badland Wall (and other Park formations) occurs at a rate of almost one inch per year, light-speed in geologic terms.