Little Jerusalem Badlands State Park

In the late 1800s people said these chalk formations looked like the ruins of many castles and called the place Castle City. The name that stuck, Little or New Jerusalem, comes from how the white walls and narrow canyons look from a distance, like an old walled city. Some of the rocks stand more than a hundred feet above the Smoky Hill River. The chalk settled on the bottom of a sea that covered much of Kansas in the Cretaceous; giant clams and oysters are common in it, and the bones of swimming and flying reptiles have come out of these badlands.

It was part of the McGuire Ranch for five generations. The Nature Conservancy owns the 332 acres and opened them as a state park with the Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks. The rules protect what lives in the chalk: ferruginous hawks and cliff swallows nest here, and the park holds the state's largest population of Great Plains wild buckwheat, a plant of the western Kansas chalk bluffs found nowhere else in the world.

Two trails stay on the rim. The Overlook Trail is a quarter mile of crushed rock to a viewpoint. The Life on the Rocks Trail runs a mile and a half to two overlooks, on gravel for the first two thirds of a mile, then natural ground. Going down among the formations is allowed only on a guided tour, booked through the state. Drones and photo sessions are not allowed. The Conservancy's Smoky Valley Ranch, with bison and two trail loops, is nearby.