Wyoming Roadie Flashback: Devils Tower

Flashback to: Monday, August 14 at Devils Tower, Wyoming

I've been fascinated with Devils Tower, since I was a boy and first saw the film Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977). You know he movie, directed Steven Speilberg, where all kinds of people converge on the remote ountain to await alien contact? Remember, Richard Dreyfuss's characetr builds a model of the tower, first out of mashed potatoes?

The "real" Devils Tower National Mounment and is even more breathe taking. A powerful earthen stump jutting from the landscape, it is impressive from every angle, all of which we viewed by walking a trail that leads completely around it. (NOTE: it is also stated that ther have never been any documented UFO sightings on or around the Tower.)



While still a few miles away, I really thought we'd see some sort of in-your-face visual indication that the Tower was coming up. Oddly, the first clue was the roadside plaque above. At this point, Devils Tower would soon be visible on the horizon, but was not yet close enough to get a really good view. It was at this time, too, that my stepson and I both realized after being in Wyoming for almost a week, that the Devils Tower had recently joined the cowboy as a state-wide license plate standard.



While the National Monument (our nation's first, actually) is officially known as "Devils Tower," this was the name given it by the American, Colonel Richard I. Dodge, who led a U.S. Geological Survey party to the area. Tribes including the Arapaho, Crow, Cheyenne, Kiowa, Lakota, and Shoshone have had cultural and geographical ties to the monolith long 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). Leave it to the white man to take an important Native American landscape feature known as "Bear Tipi" or "Bear Hut," and give it a daemonic twist.



Scientifically speaking, Devils Tower is an igneous intrusion, or, "volcanic neck." It rises dramatically 1267 feet (386 m) above the surrounding terrain. Located at 44°35′26″N, 104°42′56″W, the summit is 5112 feet (1558 m) above sea level.





The interesting thing about natural monuments like Devils Tower is that one often loses sight of all the other wonderful features which surround the central piece, and are just as amazing.

Breathe in, breathe out... YOU AND I ARE ALIVE!