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Geography. Sprawling prairies, fertile farmland and glacial lakes dominate the landscape in eastern South Dakota. Prairies and ranchland are common in central South Dakota. Mountains grace the western skyline, and in the southwest, striking Badlands formations rise abruptly from the surrounding prairie.

The Black Hills is a huge, elliptically domed area in northwestern South Dakota and northeastern Wyoming, about 125 miles long and 65 miles wide (fig. 10). Rapid City, S. Dak., is on the Missouri Plateau at the east edge of the Black Hills.

The state covers 70,704 square miles. It is made up of three major natural regions of land. They are the Red River Valley, the Drift Prairie, and the Missouri Plateau. The three regions of North Dakota are almost like three sloping stair steps as they go up in elevation (land height) from east to west.

The Grand Canyon, Rocky Mountains, Mississippi River, and Great Lakes are among the most famous landforms within the U.S. The National Parks Service and the Department of the Interior have created many national parks and wilderness preserves to protect these and others within the United States.

The geology of South Dakota began to form more than 2.5 billion years ago in the Archean eon of the Precambrian. Igneous crystalline basement rock continued to emplace through the Proterozoic, interspersed with sediments and volcanic materials.

The Great Plains cover most of the western two-thirds of South Dakota. West of the Missouri River the landscape becomes more arid and rugged, consisting of rolling hills, plains, ravines, and steep flat-topped hills called buttes. In the south, east of the Black Hills, lie the South Dakota Badlands.