Devil’s Tower
Devil’s Tower has long been a prominent landmark in northeastern Wyoming; however, the origin of the mammoth rock obelisk remains somewhat of a mystery. Geologists agree that the tower consists of molten rock forced upwards from deep within the earth an estimated 50 million years ago. However, geologists cannot agree on whether Devil’s Tower is the remains of an ancient volcano where the walls have eroded away or whether it is a sheet of molten rock injected between rock layers. The characteristic furrowed columns of the tower are apparently the result of uniformly-arranged cracks that appeared during the cooling of the magma. Devil’s Tower is composed of these symmetrical columns which can be up to 600 feet in length and 10-20 feet wide.
Many of the Native American tribes had oral histories about the origins of Devil’s Tower. The one thing they all seemed to have in common was it involved a bear for the first inhabitants of this land called the tower “Bear’s Lodge” or “Bear’s Tipi”. One story goes that an Indian woman took refuge on top of a large rock to escape from a chasing bear. The angry bear jumped and clawed at the rock shaping the tower as we know it today. Expeditions into the area by the US Army in 1875 reported that the Indians referred to the place as “god’s bad land” and that is how the label Devil’s Tower came about on American maps.
In 1906, Congress passes the Antiquities Act which empowered the President to bestow national monument status upon federally owned lands that contain landmarks and objects of a scientific or historic significance. President Theodore Roosevelt quickly applied the new Antiquities Act and made Devil’s Tower the first national monument in the United States. The National Park Service took over the administrative responsibilities of Devil’s Tower and 1,000 acres of surrounding land in 1916 when the service was created. Devil’s Tower is 867 feet tall (base to summit) and the summit itself is 1.5 acres. The base of the tower has a circumference of one mile. From the Devil’s Tower Visitor Center, there is a fantastic Tower Trail which loops around the base of the iconic tower.
Devil’s Tower is not only famous for being America’s first national monument for it played an important role in the Steven Spielberg’s 1977 sci-fi thriller Close Encounters of the Third Kind. In the film, an Indiana utility worker named Roy Neary (Richard Dreyfuss) becomes obsessed with a rock tower after his encounter with a UFO. Although he has no idea of its name nor location, Neary is compelled to create a scale model of the tower made of mud, twigs, and rocks on his kitchen table. It is not until he sees a television news report on evacuations occurring at Devil’s Tower, Wyoming that he understands his obsession. He races across country to Devil’s Tower for the climatic finale of the film with alien visitors. The KOA campground that I stayed at in the shadows of Devil’s Tower was the filming location for the movie.
