The Verendrye Plate, found on the bluffs above Fort Pierre, February 16, 1913. It was buried by La Verendrye, March 30, 1743, when he was exploring the land for France. This is the first evidence of white men in South Dakota.
See the plate in the corridor at the Capitol.
CHAPTER III
The Badlands
We cross the Missouri River on the morning of June 29th and speed along through comparatively new but highly productive agricultural land, through Hayes, Midland and Philip to Cottonwood. In Philip we find one of the most modern small cities of the state. It is worth stopping to see. When we arrive at Cottonwood, about three hours from Pierre, or a little less than one hundred ten miles, the weather seems favorable and the roads good so we turn south off U. S. highway 14. Only a few miles out of Cottonwood we look ahead and see the city-like elevations far in the distance. As we draw nearer this great wall of clay takes on a more artistic contour of multicolored towers, peaks, and walls, resembling ruins of ancient cities.
Castle Turrets Fuson Photo
Countless theories and possibilities enter one’s mind to account for these magnificent walls, rising directly from a few feet to several hundred feet from level country. The level plains are grass covered, but the walls are practically bare. They are of almost pure sandy clay, with a little soft shale in a layer near the top. They average from a hundred to five hundred feet in height and are composed of several colors each, some containing yellow, pink, orange and blue, others having still different colors. For the most part the colors are plain or washed, but some are very pronounced.
Other sections of the Badlands are depressions from the grassy flats, with enormous areas seemingly fallen straight down two to twenty feet, with perpendicular sides. The beds of these great depressions are bare yellow or white clay.
Theories of the formation of these structures include “sea bottom,” “erosion,” “volcanic eruptions,” etc.
