Devils Tower National Monument

 

Visited: March 2018

Nearby town: Sundance, WY; Hulett, WY

In the northeastern corner of Wyoming a unique, majestic, and somewhat eerie butte rises 1,267 feet above the Belle Fourche River.

The tower is very prominent and dominates the horizon. As you approach the National Monument, the moment the tower first comes into view is unforgettable and breathtaking. Even though the wintry weather slightly obstructed the view, it was still very impressive.

Devils Tower has a very unworldly appearance that contrasts with the surrounding countryside, its as if it fell from the sky and landed here. 😀 It's no wonder that Steven Spielberg used this location as a pivotal setting in his alien flick - Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

Native American tribes have a number of legends and stories to explain the origin of the Tower. The Lakota tradition tells of seven little girls who were playing in the area, when a giant bear began to chase them. The young girls climbed to the top of a rock and began to pray to the Great Spirit. The Great Spirit caused the rock to rise towards the heavens so that the giant bear could not reach them. The bear tried to climb up the rock, but could not do so because the rock was too steep. The bear's claws left long grooves on the side of the tower - these distinct marks are still visible today. The girls eventually reached the sky and were turned into the stars now known as the Pleiades. The Lakota, Kiowa, Sioux, and Cheyenne tribes consider the Tower sacred.

Native Americans called the Tower either "Bear's House," "Bear's Lodge," or "Bear's Lair." The first non-natives to discover the Tower were scouts on an expedition led by Col. Richard Irving Dodge in 1875. Apparently, his interpreter inadvertently misinterpreted the native name to mean "Bad God's Tower" and thus the name "Devil's Tower" was bestowed on the now iconic landmark. The name stuck and Devils Tower National Monument was established in 1906 by President Theodore Roosevelt. Devils Tower was the very first designated National Monument in the United States, created under the then-recent Antiquities Act. In 2005, many tribes introduced a proposal to officially refer to the tower as Bear Lodge Butte, but the attempt was unsuccessful.

The Tower is made up of igneous rock, specifically porphyritic phonolite. Geologists agree that the Tower was formed by the intrusion of igneous material, but they are not sure exactly how that process occurred. Some theorize that the tower is all that remains of an ancient, extinct volcano, others insist that it is a remnant of a laccolith - a large mass of igneous rock which is intruded through sedimentary rock beds without reaching the surface, but instead makes a rounded bulge (the tower itself) in the sedimentary layers above. 

The long, vertical hexagonal columns (columnar basalt) are about six feet in diameter. This columnar basalt rock formation is also found in Devils Postpile National Monument in California, and Giant's Causeway in Northern Ireland. The columns are incredible. 

Be sure to stop at the Visitors Center, and then do the loop trail that goes around the base of the Tower. It offers great views of the Tower from all angles. It's only about a mile. Our visit was in late March, so we had snowy, wintry weather. But it was still an enjoyable hike.

We stayed the night in the tiny town of Hulett (they had a great pizza restaurant - of course, it was pretty much the only restaurant in town). Devils Tower, miles away but still very prominent and visible on the horizon, looms over the town.

Climbers love a good challenge, and Devils Tower presents a great challenge for climbers. The first known ascent was by local ranchers, William Rogers and Willard Ripley, in 1893. They constructed a ladder of wooden pegs driven into cracks in the rock face. Some of these wooden pegs are still intact. Many Native American tribes regard the Tower as sacred ground, and consider climbing the tower a desecration. This has caused some tension, however, a compromise was reached - there is no climbing of the Tower in the month of June. The month-long prohibition on climbing is not necessarily enforced, but almost all climbers respect it.

In 1941, George Hopkins parachuted onto the top of Devils Tower as a publicity stunt. He had intended to descend the Tower by use of a 1,000 ft rope - but the package (containing the rope, a sledge hammer and a car axle to be driven into the rock as an anchor point) that was dropped after his jump did not land on top of the tower. Mr. Hopkins was stranded. Hopkins was stuck on top of the Tower for six days until he was rescued by a climbing crew. Hopkins did gain publicity - and some notoriety - in the media at the time.  

Devils Tower is a great place to visit and pair up with a trip to Black Hills/Mt. Rushmore in South Dakota (although the Tower is in Wyoming, it's close to the border and only about a 2-hour drive from Mt. Rushmore). Devils Tower is an iconic, beautiful and unforgettable landmark. More info here: https://www.nps.gov/deto/index.htm