About
Length11.4 mi
ShapeLoop
DifficultyHard
Elevation gain800 ft up
Typical time3 hr
TrailheadJuniper Campground, North Unit
SurfacePrairie and coulee, faint in places
Best seasonMay to October. Bentonite clay turns to grease when wet, so avoid the backcountry after rain in any season.
DogsNot allowed
What you'll see 🌄 Big views🦌 Wildlife🎒 Backpacking

The Buckhorn Trail is an 11.4mi loop that travels through prairie dog towns, sagebrush terraces, deep canyons, and high open prairies, allowing you to experience a variety of plant and animal life. As you take in this landscape of layered hills, and strangely shaped rock formations, it might feel like you've left the flat farmlands of North Dakota and entered another planet. Roosevelt himself once described the badlands as "so fantastically broken in form and so bizarre in color as to seem hardly properly to belong to this earth."

Tips
The park keeps a small demonstration herd of longhorn steers in the North Unit and they use these coulees. Carry all your water; there is none on the route.
Location

Juniper Campground, North Unit

🎒 What to pack

This trail is set up for backpacking, so it's worth packing for a night out as well as the walk.

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Trail data: USGS National Map / PAD-US, the National Park Service, state agencies, and © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL). Access and conditions change — check with the managing agency before you go.