Bisti De-Na-Zin Wilderness Photos

I first heard of the Bisti Badlands in the 1970s while I was in high school. It is now called the Bisti De-Na-Zin Wilderness. Occasionally I would see other photos or two, but the Bisti was always far away from Wisconsin. Three decades later I finally paid a visit. After all, I had lived in New Mexico for four years. It was 250 miles each way from Santa Fe, but I was so hooked by the hoodoo landscape that I returned two weekends later, and many more times over the following years.

Those years were filled with numerous trips to other prominent badlands in northwest New Mexico, but the Bisti was the easiest to access. So even though it was the farthest away, it was an “Old Faithful” trip for me. During threatening weather, the kind that gives photographers skies to die for, the road is paved nearly all of the way with well-maintained gravel for the last few miles.

And it never really got old. Most trips I wandered aimlessly and always found something new. Unsuccessful attempts to locate some location I had visited before almost always led to discoveries. No GPS, no map—just wander around! You would be hard-pressed to get lost here since all of the dry washes eventually head west to the parking areas. Just hike downhill! If you want coordinates to this set of rocks or that, then I can’t give them to you—I never recorded them. Eventually, I found those famous locations, more or less by chance, but I saw so much more in the meantime.

Many of these photographs are also in my badlands galleries, but I thought it would be nice to gather them together in one place, along with a dozen photos not found elsewhere on this site. These photos are all taken in the Bisti. It’s sad I have to say this. When you search the web for “Bisti Photos,” a surprising number of images are not from the Bisti at all. It’s a shame that organizations like Getty Images do not care about authenticity!

Lightening up, here’s a little badlands fun: shrink yourself down and take a ride on the Bisti Mini-Jeep Tour.