Devils' Tower

                         DEVIL'S TOWER, WYOMING

Potential as Market for Elephants- None really they might find grazing around base of the tower  and to the south but would never survive winter or even fall.

Date of My Visit: 8/14/15

Geology--Devil’s Tower is a truly surprising feature shooting out of a near flat basin off US 90 in Wyoming.     

The Tower and some nearby structures called the Little Missouri Buttes may

be the remains of the throat of a volcano or they may be intrusive upwelling’s of igneous rock that never broke thru the thick layers of sedimentary rock to the surface. 

 Whichever is true much of the Devil’s Tower current appearance is the result of erosion by the Belle Fourche (Beautiful Fork) River.  The national park service measurements for the tower in 2014 were

867 feet tall from its base and 1,267 feet above the river. Its diameter at the base is 1,000 feet and its ill regular top is 1.5 sq. acres.

History- The tower, and the entire area, is important in several Native American tribes’ religious traditions.   Anthropologists record that at different times the Lakota, Cheyenne, and other tribes spent winters in the rich Belle Fourche Valley, while holding prayer and healing ceremonies at what they called the Bear Tower or Bear Lodge.

The Kiowa tell the legend of eight children, seven sisters and a brother, who were playing on the river bank.  The brother suddenly transformed into a bear and chased his sisters.  They scrambled on a large rock and begin to cry for help.  The rock grew and stretched into the sky until they were out of reach of the now gigantic bear.  He left his claw marks on the sides of the tower and pushed it a little off center.  The seven sisters were taken away into the sky were they became the Pleiades.

The striking vertical ‘bear scratches’ are called columnar joints by geologists and are formed by the cooling and contraction of the rock once heated to near liquid.   A boulder field, eroded from the tower by weather, lies around the base. 

The modern name Devil’s Tower was given it in 1875 by Col. Richard Dodge who led a military/scientific expedition to survey the Black Hills and possibly confirm reports of gold.  His journals say he was told by Native Americans that the tower was a dangerous place were evil spirits were found.   It has been suggested that bear god was translated as bad god.  Many Native Americans feel naming their sacred place Devil’s anything suggests a connection between Satanism and their traditional religious practices.

I wonder if his choice of the name Devil’s Tower was simply the result of Europeans calling unusual geographic features the Devil’s this and the Devil’s that.   In my 1949 Encyclopedia there are five places called the Devil’s this or that on one page.   

A request for a name change back to Bear Lodge is being considered by the U.S. Board of Geographic Names (See the e-mail reproduced at the bottom.)

The first recorded ascent to the top of Devil’s Tower was on July 4^th 1893 by two locals William Rogers and Willard Ripley who had installed a wooden ladder for the first 350 feet. They raised a U.S. Flag and then sold pieces of it at their Lemonade stand.  An annual 4^th of July picnic and fireworks display became an important social event linking the many remote ranches and small towns.

Today about 3000 rock climbers come to challenge the tower every year.  It is necessary to register with the ranger service.   Climbing may be canceled for weather or out of respect for Native American ceremonies.

With Permission of Lakota County Times

An example is the Sacred Hoop Run is a five-day, 500-mile relay run based on a myth about how the Lakota first came to the Black Hills. In the story, it is said that all the creatures of the plains gathered together to decide whether to allow the two-legged animals into their homeland. The winged creatures were for it, and the four-legged creatures were against it. To settle the matter, they raced in a big loop, or hoop, through the Black Hills. The first time the four legged won, the second time the winged won, and the third time a magpie rode on the back of a buffalo, and they won. Thereafter, all the creatures gave their blessing for the two-legged Lakota to enter the Black Hills.

In 1906 President Theodore Roosevelt proclaimed Devil’s Tower the first national monument using the Antiquities Act.  This bill passed in 1906 allows the president to, by proclamation, create national monuments from public lands to protect significant natural, cultural or scientific features.  It is one of the few things a president can do without any oversight.

My Visit- I was going west from Rapid City, South Dakota to Cody, Wyoming the day I visited so I left I-90 at Sundance, Wyoming.  Yes the site of Robert Redford’s famous film festival and the town the Sundance Kid took his alias from.  WY 14 takes one within sight of tower and then loops back to I-90 so I rejoined it at Moorcroft, a center of the coal and oil industry in the area. People coming from the east can just reverse my route.

One approaches the tower by a paved road that circles the base of the tower after purchasing a ticket.
Go to the parking lot and there is a paved path that leads to base of the boulder field.

I saw no one equipped for rock climbing, but the posted signs say that one need not register unless one climbs above the boulder field.  I saw several people climbing like these folks with only rubber sandals, flip flops we call them.

I took the short one and a half trail around the base of the tower getting a view of its vertical cracks from several angles.

 The further I got from the crowded parking lot and campground I saw more and more medicine bags and ribbons, religious items hung in the forest.   The paths have numerous reminders to stay on them and avoid disturbing these sacred activities.

The ranger station has nothing special in the way of souvenirs or books.


When leaving you get a good look at the red sandstone cliffs that surround the base and a prairie dog city.

 It is forbidden to feed the little animals or enter the actual field.  As you can see from these pictures they have learned to beg, but I recommend staying on the graveled overlook, history is full of people being injured stepping in prairie dog holes and they are sometimes occupied by rattlesnakes.

Returning to US90 I found the stretch on route US14 around the Keyhole Reservoir rather unsettling, it actually looks like it was once an ocean bottom, as was much of this area. It’s also full of giant oil and gas tankers.

Geek factor-   Devil’s tower’s eerie appearance attracted Steven Spielberg to film the alien landing scene there in his third feature film, Close Encounters of the Third Kind.   

Further Resources-

“Devils Tower, Sacred Space”,   falseJenkins, Mark. The Virginia Quarterly Review 89.1  (Winter 2013): pp 233-237, 9

Devils Tower National Monument,   www.nps.gov/deto

Devils Tower Northeast Wyoming   www.devilstowercountry.com

Lageson, David, Roadside Geology of Wyoming  Mountain Press Publishing Company, Missoula MT   1991   pp 98-99

Locations of Close Encounters of the Third Kind:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFQPLUhbuSc

“Should Devils Tower be renamed?”  Bismarck Tribune [Bismarck, ND] 21 July 2015: 6.

National Park Service Video:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPIr0OZmBtc

On January 20, 2016 I received the following message.

 Dear Mr. Goodson

In November 2014, the Board received proposals to change the name of Devils Tower (the summit and the nearby small community, but not the National Monument) to Bear Lodge.  (The name of the monument can only be renamed by an act of Congress.)

The Board’s staff prepared a case brief for the changes (see pgs. 38-43 of Quarterly Review List 419: http://geonames.usgs.gov/domestic/quarterly_list.htm) and solicited comments from a number of interested parties, including the Crook County government, the Wyoming Board of Geographic Names, the National Park Service, and several tribal governments. 

However, in September 2015, the Board was advised that Representative Cynthia Lummis and Senator Michael Enzi had introduced H.R. 3527 and S. 2039, respectively, “To designate the mountain at the Devils Tower National Monument, Wyoming, as Devils Tower, and for other purposes.” 

The Board’s Policy I states that if a name is being considered by the U.S. Congress, the Board will not render a decision on that name (see pg. 17 of its Principles, Policies, and Procedures: http://geonames.usgs.gov/docs/pro_pol_pro.pdf).  As such, the proposals that were being considered by the Board were immediately put on hold and no further action has been taken.

Please let us know if you have further questions.

Sincerely yours,

Jennifer Runyon, research staff

For Lou Yost, Executive Secretary

U.S. Board on Geographic Names

U.S. Geological Survey, Geographic Names Office

Reston, Virginia 20192

(703) 648-4550