Just off the interstate, the Painted Canyon overlook drops away without warning into a vast bowl of banded badlands, the traveler's first stunning glimpse of the wild country.

Descended from ranch and cavalry stock, the wild horse bands of the badlands drift across the ridges of the national park's south unit, one of the park's most beloved sights.

Winding through the badlands between the units of the national park, the Maah Daah Hey Trail offers more than a hundred miles of rugged singletrack to the hiker, the horse and the mountain bike.

The rugged country where a young Theodore Roosevelt ranched and grieved is now the national park that bears his name, and its buttes and bison remain the wild heart of the west.