![]() ![]() The Tower rises out of the plains near the Bear Lodge Mountains of the Black Hills, standing 1,267 ft above the Belle Fourche River in Crook County, Wyoming.President Teddy Roosevelt declared Devils Tower the first United States National Monument on September 24, 1906.Since long before the movie, however, this massive rock column in the northeastern corner of Wyoming has been a sacred site for Native Americans and an inspiration to nature lovers. Synopsis: You may have seen Devils Tower-what looks like an 850-ft-tall tree stump-in the 1977 Steven Spielberg movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Perhaps the sacred bear didn’t want us in his lodge that day. We got within a hundred feet of the top before snow turned us back. One October long ago, I tried climbing it myself. ![]() Today, the tower’s long cracks and columns make it one of the world’s foremost rock-climbing sites-except during the month of June, when climbers respect Native American traditions and leave the tower to their ceremonies. Eventually the sediments around it eroded away, exposing the tower, which rises more than 800 ft above the plains! The magma slowly cooled underground around 40 million years ago, forming the columns on its outer surface. The tower began as a shaft of hot magma that formed in sedimentary layers near the surface. This legend gave rise to the Crow, Arapahoe, and Cheyenne name for the tower: Bear Lodge. The angry bear scratches its claws on the tower, creating its signature fluted sides. They climb atop a rock, and to save the children, the gods make the rock rise from the prairie. Most of their stories revolve around children being chased by a giant bear. Many Plains Indian tribes gave the tower mystical significance. Later in the movie, the tower becomes the landing platform for alien spaceships.īut it had otherworldly connections centuries before that. You may remember the film Close Encounters of the Third Kind, when Richard Dreyfuss fills his living room with dirt and garbage to sculpt a replica of Devils Tower. Credit: Samzeroniner (own work) (CC BY-SA 4.0 ), via Wikimedia Commons For more than a decade, Native American tribal members requested that the name of the sacred site be changed to Bear Lodge National Historic Landmark, but this name has not received congressional support. ![]() In 1906, President Theodore Roosevelt declared Devils Tower the first National Monument in the United States. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |