Devil's Tower National Monument

The Legend of Devil's Tower
Herbert A. Collins

According to Lakoda Sioux legend, some girls were out playing when they stumbled into a large bear who wanted to eat them.  The girls climbed onto a rock and prayed to the Great Spirit to save them.  The rock beneath their feet rose up into the sky, carrying them safely above the bear’s reach.  The bear clawed at the great pillar, etching deep marks in its side, but to no avail.  When I was a kid, my friend Sarah got a postcard from her Dad with a drawing of the story (above).  The great bear can be seen angrily tearing at the odd-looking mountain as tiny figures hurl spears and rocks at it from above.  As much as I liked the drama of the scene, I was really amazed to learn that the tower of rock in the story actually exists.

Devil's Tower - Photo: B. Perry

Hexagonal fractures in Devil's Tower
Photo: S. Perry 

Devil’s Tower is a 1267-foot-tall block of igneous rock located in the northeast corner of Wyoming.  In geology circles, there is some debate as to how it was formed. It could be an eroded laccolith, a dome of igneous rock that forms between layers of sedimentary rock without reaching the surface.  The overlying sedimentary layers eroded away and the sides of the dome fell off, leaving only the tower behind.  Alternatively, it may be the volcanic plug of an extinct volcano which has long since eroded away along with the surrounding sedimentary rock.  However it formed, geologists know the rock is phonolite porphyry extruded about 40.5 million years ago. As the rock cooled, vertical cracks formed clean, compact hexagonal columns.  These columns shear off the sides of the tower leaving behind distinctive, multifaceted faces.  Piles of broken columns of rock surround the base of the tower.

Devil’s Tower has an interesting place in the history of the protection and preservation of America’s treasures.  In 1892, a bill was read in the U.S Senate to create a Devil’s Tower National Park but nothing was done to advance it for the next fourteen years.  President Theodore Roosevelt was concerned that the tower would be irreparably exploited by the time Congress acted.  Fortunately, Congress passed the Antiquities Act of 1906, giving the President the power to set aside certain valuable public natural areas as park and conservation land for "the protection of objects of historic and scientific interest." The law was intended to be used to protect small tracts of prehistoric Indian ruins and other archeological sites in the southwest from looting by “pot diggers”.  However, setting an historic precedent, Roosevelt used the Antiquities Act to establish Devil’s Tower National Monument as the nation’s first National Monument on September 24, 1906.  Since then, over 100 National Monuments have been established by Presidents using the Antiquities Act.    

Remains of the Tower Ladder

William Rogers and Willard Ripley, two local ranchers, became the first men to climb to the summit on July 4, 1893.  They made the climb by pounding wooden stakes into a crack.  This tower ladder was used by about 215 people over several decades before it fell into disrepair.  The lower 100 feet of the ladder were removed in the 1930s for safety reasons.  The remains of the tower ladder can still be seen from the trail below.  In 1941, George Hopkins parachuted onto the tower on a bet.  Unfortunately, the rope he needed to climb down missed the summit and fell to the ground below.  Hopkins spent the next six days waiting to be rescued.  Today, the monument hosts over 400,000 visitors annually; about 1% of them come to climb the tower.  The local Sioux find climbing the tower to be a desecration of a sacred site.  They have asked that no one climb during the month of June when tribes are conducting ceremonies in the area – and about 85% of climbers comply.

But let’s face it: most Americans know about Devil’s Tower from Steven Spielberg’s 1977 movie, Close Encounters of the Third Kind.  The tower is chosen by extraterrestrial visitors as the rendezvous site for their first contact with humankind.  Richard Dreyfuss becomes obsessed with sculpting the tower after his first close encounter.  When you first saw the movie, did you know what Dreyfuss was making with his mashed potatoes?   

Roy's Mashed Potatoes Close Encounters of the Third Kind — MOVIECLIPS.com

My son and I visited Devil’s Tower National Monument during the fall of 2005.  I was telling him the story of Sarah’s postcard as we walked into the gift shop – and there on the wall was the same picture of the bear clawing at the tower that I’d seen so many years before.  We hiked around the base of the tower, marveling at the six-sided columns everywhere.  The tower seemed smaller than we had imagined.  I’m sure the movie has something to do with that.  Later, at the Devils Tower Trading Post, I bought a pack of Close Encounters trading cards for $7.00 (needless to say, I didn’t chew the 28-year-old gum).

My $7.00 Close Encounter Trading Cards

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