Charles Badger Clark, Jr. was born in Iowa on January 1, 1883 to Charles and Mary Clark, who moved that spring to Plankinton, SD. The family moved to Deadwood where the poet, then known as C. B. Clark, graduated from high school in 1902. He attended Dakota Wesleyan University for a year before joining a group of 30 other prospective colonists to Cuba. Returning to Deadwood in 1905, he worked as a surveyor and a reporter before moving to Arizona for his tuberculosis. In 1910, four years after his first publications appeared, (the poems Ridin' and A Cowboy's Prayer), he moved to Hot Springs to help care for his parents. His lifelong speaking career began in 1915, when his first book of poems, Sun and Saddle Leather, was published. In 1925, Badger moved to Custer State Park; he was named the state's first Poet Laureate in 1927. He finished building his cabin, The Badger Hole, in 1937, living there until his death in 1957.
