Everything about Devils Tower National Monument totally explained
Devils Tower (
Lakota:
Mato Tipila, which means “Bear Tower”) is a
monolithic
igneous intrusion or
volcanic neck located in the
Black Hills near
Hulett and
Sundance in
Crook County, northeastern
Wyoming, above the
Belle Fourche River. It rises dramatically 1,267 feet (386 m) above the surrounding terrain and the summit is 5,112 feet (1,558 m) above sea level.
Devils Tower was the first declared
United States National Monument, established on
September 24 1906 by President
Theodore Roosevelt. The Monument's boundary encloses an area of 1,347 acres (5.45 km²).
In recent years about 1% of the Monument's 400,000 annual visitors
climb Devils Tower. The monolith is featured prominently in the 1977 film
Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
Name
Tribes including the
Arapaho,
Crow,
Cheyenne,
Kiowa,
Lakota, and
Shoshone had cultural and geographical ties to the monolith before European and early American immigrants reached Wyoming. Their names for the monolith include: Aloft on a Rock (Kiowa), Bear's House (Cheyenne, Crow), Bear's Lair (Cheyenne, Crow), Bear's Lodge (Cheyenne, Lakota), Bear's Lodge Butte (Lakota), Bear's Tipi (Arapaho, Cheyenne), Tree Rock (Kiowa), and Grizzly Bear Lodge (Lakota).
The name Devils Tower probably originated in 1875 during an expedition led by Col.
Richard Irving Dodge when his interpreter misinterpreted the name to mean Bad God's Tower. This was later shortened to Devils Tower.
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In 2005, a proposal to recognize these ties through the additional designation of the monolith as Bear Lodge National Historic Landmark met with opposition from Rep.
Barbara Cubin, arguing that a "name change will harm the tourist trade and bring economic hardship to area communities"
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Geological history
Most of the landscape surrounding Devils Tower is composed of
sedimentary rocks.
The oldest rocks visible in Devils Tower National Monument were laid down in a shallow sea during the
Triassic period, 225 to 195 million years ago. This dark red
sandstone and maroon
siltstone, interbedded with
shale, can be seen along the
Belle Fourche River.
Oxidation of iron minerals causes the redness of the rocks. This rock layer is known as the Spearfish formation.
Above the Spearfish formation is a thin band of white
gypsum, called the Gypsum Spring Formation. This layer of gypsum was deposited during the
Jurassic period, 195 to 136 million years ago.
Created as sea levels and climates repeatedly changed, gray-green shales (deposited in low-oxygen environments such as marshes) were interbedded with fine-grained sandstones,
limestones, and sometimes thin beds of red
mudstone. This composition, called the Stockade Beaver member, is part of the Sundance formation. The Hulett Sandstone member, also part of the Sundance formation, is composed of yellow fine-grained sandstone. Resistant to weathering, it forms the nearly vertical cliffs which encircle the Tower itself.
About 65 million years ago, during the
Tertiary period, the
Rocky Mountains and the
Black Hills were uplifted. Molten
magma rose through the
crust, intruding into the already existing sedimentary rock layers.
Theories of formation
Geologists agree that Devils Tower was formed by the
intrusion of
igneous material. What they can't agree upon is how, exactly, that process took place. Geologists Carpenter and Russell studied Devils Tower in the late 1800s and came to the conclusion that the Tower was indeed formed by an igneous intrusion. Later geologists searched for further explanations. Several geologists believe the molten rock comprising the Tower might not have surfaced; other researchers are convinced the tower is all that remains of what once was a large explosive volcano.
In 1907, scientists Darton and O'Hara decided that Devils Tower must be an eroded remnant of a
laccolith. A laccolith is a large mass of igneous rock which is intruded through sedimentary rock beds but doesn't actually reach the surface, producing a rounded bulge in the sedimentary layers above. This theory was quite popular in the early 1900s since numerous studies had earlier been done on a number of laccoliths in the Southwest.
Other theories have suggested that Devils Tower is a
volcanic plug or that it's the neck of an extinct volcano. Presumably, if Devils Tower was a volcanic plug, any volcanics created by it — volcanic ash, lava flows, volcanic debris — would have been eroded away long ago. Some pyroclastic material of the same age as Devils Tower has been identified elsewhere in Wyoming.
Geologists agree that the igneous material intruded and then cooled as phonolite
porphyry, a light to dark-gray or greenish-gray igneous
trachyte rock with conspicuous crystals of white
feldspar. As the lava cooled,
hexagonal (and sometimes 4-, 5-, and 7-sided)
columns formed. As the rock continued to cool, the vertical columns shrank horizontally in volume and cracks began to occur at 120 degree angles, generally forming compact 6-sided columns. Superficially similar, but with typically diameter columns,
Devils Postpile National Monument and
Giant's Causeway are
columnar basalt.
Until
erosion began its relentless work, Devils Tower wasn't visible above the overlying sedimentary rocks. But the forces of erosion, particularly that of water, began to wear away the sandstones and shales. The much harder igneous rock survived the onslaught of erosional forces, and the gray columns of Devils Tower began to appear above the surrounding landscape.
As rain and snow continue to erode the sedimentary rocks surrounding the Tower's base, and the Belle Fourche River carries away the debris, more of Devils Tower will be exposed. But at the same time, the Tower itself is slowly being eroded: cracks that form the columns are subject to water and ice, becoming larger. Rocks are continually breaking off and falling from the steep walls, and occasionally entire columns fall. Piles of
scree — broken columns, boulders, small rocks, and stones — lie at the base of the tower, indicating that it once was larger than it's today.
Recent history
Fur trappers may have visited Devils Tower, but they left no written evidence of having done so. The first documented visitors were several members of
Captain W. F. Raynold's Yellowstone Expedition who arrived in 1859. Sixteen years later,
Colonel Richard I. Dodge led a
U.S. Geological Survey party to the massive rock formation and coined the name Devils Tower. Recognizing its unique characteristics,
Congress designated the area a U.S. forest reserve in 1892 and in 1906 Devils Tower became the nation's first
national monument. All
information signs and
references use the name "Devils Tower", following geographic naming standards wherein the apostrophe is eliminated.
On
July 4,
1893, local rancher William Rogers became the first person to complete the climb after constructing a ladder of wooden pegs driven into cracks in the rock face. Technical rock climbing techniques were first used to ascend the Tower in 1937 when
Fritz Wiessner reached the summit with a small party from the
American Alpine Club. Today hundreds of climbers scale the sheer rock walls each summer; each lava column defines its own
climbing routes, whose difficulties range from easy to some of the hardest in the world. On some routes the gap between columns is just narrow enough to bridge with stretched-out legs, so the climber ascends doing "the splits" all the way. All climbers must register with a park ranger before and after attempting a climb.
The
1977 movie
Close Encounters of the Third Kind used Devils Tower as a central plot element and as a location for its climactic scenes.
Native American folklore
American Indian legends tell of six
Sioux girls who were picking flowers when they were chased by bears. Feeling sorry for them, the
Great Spirit raised the ground beneath the girls. The bears tried to climb the rock, but fell off, leaving their scratch marks on the sides.
Another version tells of how two
Sioux boys wandered far from their village when Mato the bear, a huge creature that had claws the size of teepee poles, spotted them, and wanted to eat them for breakfast. He was almost upon them when the boys prayed to
Wakan Tanka the Creator to help them. They rose up on a huge rock, while Mato tried to get up from every side, leaving huge scratch marks as he did. Finally, he sauntered off, disappointed and discouraged. The bear came to rest east of the
Black Hills at what is now
Bear Butte. Wanblee, the eagle, helped the boys off the rock and back to their village. A painting depicting this legend by artist
Herbert A. Collins hangs over the fireplace in the visitor's center at Devil's Tower.
The Tower is sacred to several Native American Plains tribes, including the
Lakota Sioux,
Cheyenne and
Kiowa. Because of this, many Indian leaders objected to climbers ascending the monument, as they felt this was a desecration. The climbers felt that they'd a right to climb the Tower, since it's on federal land. A compromise was eventually reached with a voluntary climbing ban during the month of June when the tribes are conducting ceremonies around the monument. Climbers are asked, but not required, to stay off the Tower in June. According to the
PBS documentary
In Light of Reverence, approximately 85% of climbers honor the ban and voluntarily choose not to climb the Tower during the month of June. However, several climbers along with the
Mountain States Legal Foundation sued the Park Service, claiming an inappropriate government entanglement with religion.
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