1 active Badlands alert
- ClosureNotch Trail closed for ladder repairsNotch Trail and all areas within 100 feet of the designated trail are closed; do not enter the closure area.Official details
Overview
About Yellow Mounds Overlook
Why stop
- A memorable mix of yellow, purple, gray and red layers beside the main park road.
Yellow Mounds Overlook is a roadside viewpoint on SD-240, with a view across rounded, brightly banded hills. It’s worth the quick stop when the park’s pale spires start to blur together: mustard-yellow slopes, purple and gray bands, and thin red stripes make this view feel different. The parking area serves the overlook, so you can take in the main view right from the road.
Parkwolf’s verdictWhy it's worth pulling overMap
Where it is
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Full mapPlan your stop
Before you go
The highest, rockiest slopes around here are a summer buffet for grizzly bears.
Badlands Tour Guide
Your drive to Yellow Mounds Overlook, narrated.
Parkwolf is a GPS audio tour guide for Badlands National Park. As you drive, it chimes in with what’s ahead: hidden gems, upcoming stops, history, geology, and wildlife, right through your car’s speakers.
See the Badlands audio tourRecorded for this place
Yellow Mounds and Conata Basin0:00 / 0:32
“You're coming up on the Yellow Mounds and Conata Basin overlooks, where mustard-yellow hills sit below purple bands and paler ridges.”
Plays as you drive up to Yellow Mounds Overlook in the Parkwolf Badlands Tour Guide.
More stories near here in the app
- Conata Picnic Area and Deer Haven
- Conata Basin's Ferret Comeback
- What an Oreodont's Teeth Reveal
- Homestead Overlook
- 116 audio storiesacross Badlands’s roads, triggered by GPS as you drive
- Wildlife heatmapsfor Bison, Bighorn Sheep, Prairie Dog, and 13 more
- Works offlinemaps, 11 trails, 34 places, and audio download before you lose signal
- CarPlay readysimple controls built for the drive
“We recently toured Badlands, Custer State Park, Mount Rushmore and more! We learned so much from this app as we toured each of these sites. The audio tours are worth the money.”
Guide
More about Yellow Mounds Overlook
The yellow is ancient soilThese hills are weathered Pierre Shale that became soil after the Western Interior Seaway…
These hills are weathered Pierre Shale that became soil after the Western Interior Seaway drained away. That soil was later preserved as a paleosol—an ancient soil layer—and goethite gives it the mustard color. The yellow is a clue that this shale was exposed on land between older marine mud and younger deposits.
Layers record changing landscapesFrom bottom to top, the visible sequence runs through Yellow Mounds and Interior Paleosol, then…
From bottom to top, the visible sequence runs through Yellow Mounds and Interior Paleosol, then the Chadron and Brule formations. Chadron’s gray claystone formed on a hot, wet floodplain about 37 to 34 million years ago. The overlying Brule records a cooler, drier savanna about 34 to 30 million years ago. Fossils include alligators and brontotheres in Chadron, then grazers such as oreodonts and nimravids in Brule.
Look further back than the hillsThe underlying Pierre Shale formed beneath the Western Interior Seaway roughly 75 to 69 million…
The underlying Pierre Shale formed beneath the Western Interior Seaway roughly 75 to 69 million years ago. Its fossils are marine—ammonites, baculites and mosasaurs—which fits a sea that once reached from the Gulf toward the Arctic. The colored bands here stack an old sea, ancient soil, floodplain and savanna into one view.
Frame the colors togetherFor a photo, include the yellow and purple mounds in front with the paler striped buttes behind…
For a photo, include the yellow and purple mounds in front with the paler striped buttes behind them; that contrast is what makes this overlook stand apart. Some visitors report that late-day light brings out the color, but it depends on the conditions.
Wildlife
Wildlife in Badlands
760 sightingsBisonMost seen around 6 PMSighting map
1,061 sightingsBighorn SheepMost seen around 6 AMSighting map
906 sightingsPrairie DogMost seen around 5 PMSighting map
333 sightingsPronghornMost seen around 6 AMSighting map
304 sightingsMule DeerMost seen around 7 PMSighting map
87 sightingsCoyoteMost seen around 7 PMSighting mapSighting maps show where each species has been reported across Badlands. Wildlife moves, so no sighting is guaranteed.
