Wyoming
Eastern Wyoming is relatively flat, with one notable exception: Devils Tower, a sentinel of columnar basalt, rising 1200 feet above the nearby Belle Fourche River. Visible from miles away—including skyward—the tower has been a navigational and spiritual landmark for travelers and Native Americans for thousands of years.
The specific origin of Devils Tower is somewhat controversial. Geologists generally agree the stone that makes up the tower was born around 40 million years ago, when magma was forced up through layers of rock, but whether this rock reached the surface before it cooled is a matter of debate. Depending on whom you ask, Devils Tower could be classified as a stock, a laccolith, or a volcanic plug. A stock cools underground, a laccolith creates a dome at the surface, and a volcanic plug forms in the neck of an exposed volcano.
Whatever the tower’s story of formation, outside layers of sedimentary rock eroded away over time, leaving the interior column of volcanic rock standing high above the surrounding landscape. Devils Tower is made up of hexagonal columns that formed when the rock cooled and fractured along regular joints, forming the geometrically shaped columns.
Geologists aren’t sure how Devils Tower formed. It could be classified as a volcanic plug, laccolith, or stock.
Native Americans tell different stories of how the tower formed. According to legends passed down by the Kiowa and Lakota Sioux, fearsome bears were chasing some young girls, who prayed to the Great Spirit for help. The tower rose up underneath the girls, lifting them out of reach. The angry bears clawed at the rock, leaving long vertical scratches said to result in the tower’s cracks and columns.
Long before it was designated Devils Tower National Monument in 1906, the throne of rock was known by various tribes as the Bear’s Lodge, the Bear’s Tipi, Tree Rock, and Grizzly Bear Lodge. The name Devils Tower is considered an affront by many of the Native American tribes who revere the tower, including the Lakota Sioux, Crow, Arapaho, Cheyenne, Kiowa, and Shoshone, but the most recent proposal to rename the tower Bear Lodge National Historic Landmark was shot down in 2005.
Devils Tower appears as a massive gray rock rising up from the landscape of rolling hills and patches of evergreen forests. You might fly over Devils Tower en route to Casper or Jackson, Wyoming, or Rapid City, South Dakota.
