Little Jerusalem Badlands State Park

About this park

Little Jerusalem Badlands State Park, established in 2018, is Kansas's newest state park and preserves the largest exposure of Niobrara chalk formations in the state. The eroded canyons and pinnacles resemble the badlands of the American West far more than typical Kansas prairie, giving the park a strikingly different landscape from the rest of the state park system. The chalk formations here contain 85-million-year-old marine fossils, remnants of the shallow inland sea that once covered this part of North America, and the park also supports the state's largest known population of Great Plains wild buckwheat, a species of conservation concern. Because the formations are fragile and ecologically sensitive, Little Jerusalem is managed as a day-use-only site with two self-guided overlook trails rather than open hiking through the badlands themselves, protecting both the geology and the rare plant life while still allowing visitors close views of this unusual landscape.