Show Kids the Stars at This Newly Designated Dark Sky Park

The first and only International Dark Sky Place in South Dakota was just announced, and it’s none other than Badlands National Park. The recent designation also marks just the second national park in the National Park Service’s Midwest Region to be a dark sky park, and one of only 40 National Park Service units nationwide to earn the designation.

Now, family travelers have even more reasons to visit the national park. Spanning more than 240,000 acres, Badlands National Park features striking geological formations, mixed-grass prairie, rugged wilderness and dark skies. The park’s remote location and limited surrounding development make for optimal stargazing.

To achieve International Dark Sky Park designation, the park and its partners underwent a multi-year effort focused on promoting night sky stewardship and reducing light pollution, including retrofitting exterior lighting to meet dark sky standards, implementing night sky quality monitoring and expanding ranger-led night sky programming.

There are few better places to teach kids about the universe. From the park, you can spot the Milky Way, planets and even deep-sky objects, all visible to the naked eye.

In addition to its dark skies, buttes, pinnacles and spires, the park also holds great historical and cultural significance. The night sky has long played a massive role in Indigenous knowledge systems, including Lakota Star Knowledge, which connects cultural traditions to celestial observations, storytelling and a greater understanding of the natural world.

The park is also an important scientific landscape, with ongoing research in paleontology, geology, ecology and environmental science.