Panorama Point looks out over the eroded formations and down toward the White River Valley, and the view is much like the one around Bigfoot Pass. The lot has exhibits and wheelchair-accessible sites. Its wide outlook makes it a good place to learn the sequence of Badlands layers: the Pierre Shale and its inland sea at the base, the gray Chadron Formation of a warm floodplain, the striped Brule Formation of a drying savanna, and the Sharps Formation at the top, with the Rockyford Ash at its foot. Colors deepen at sunrise, at sunset and after rain. The park is a certified International Dark Sky Park, and owls, bats and black-footed ferrets all depend on that darkness. Visitors short on time may choose this stop or Bigfoot Pass.
Pull in for this one, Panorama Point, on your right. Everything since Pinnacles has been this stack, and here's how to read it. That whole view was laid down flat, one world on top of another. You read it from the bottom up. The bottom is out of sight, the floor of a shallow sea that ran from the Gulf of Mexico to the Arctic, seventy-five million years ago. Then come the gray beds. About thirty-five million years ago this was a hot, wet floodplain, like the Everglades, with ancient alligators in it. Above them are the reddish stripes. The world cooled and dried out, and the floodplain opened into savanna. That change of color is a change of climate, and you can read it from here. Near the top of the stack sits the Rockyford Ash, the only layer of pure volcanic ash in the park. Over that sit the last rocks of all, river sandstones about twenty-eight million years old. Then, only half a million years ago, the rivers cut in and started taking it apart. On the clearest days you can see about one hundred forty miles. This is an International Dark Sky Park, and on any given night you'll get more than seventy-five hundred stars. In about a mile, on your left, Bigfoot Pass has restrooms.
Photo: NPS / Emily Van Ness · Public domain (U.S. Government work)