Devils Tower National Monument
WY-110, Devils Tower, WY
Devils Tower, WY
A great fluted tower of stone rising alone above the pines, the first place the country ever set aside as a national monument and a sacred site to more than twenty tribes.
Devils Tower rises straight out of the rolling pine country of northeast Wyoming, a great flat-topped column of stone that stands roughly 867 feet above the Belle Fourche River and can be seen from far across the plains. In 1906 President Theodore Roosevelt made it the very first national monument in the United States, using a brand new law, the Antiquities Act, to protect it.
The tower is a mass of hard igneous rock that cooled underground and was slowly uncovered as the softer land around it eroded away. As it cooled it cracked into the enormous vertical columns that give it its fluted, organ-pipe look. To the many tribes of the Northern Plains it is not a curiosity but a holy place, and the name most of them use, Bear Lodge, carries a story far older than the monument.
What Guests Love
- Watching the light change on the tower's fluted columns from the paved Tower Trail loop at its base
- The prairie dog town on the flats below, alive with barking, standing sentries
- Spotting climbers as tiny specks working up the vertical cracks
- A dark, quiet night sky with the tower lit by the moon
Worth Knowing
- This is a sacred site to many Northern Plains tribes; be respectful of prayer cloths tied in the trees and of ceremonies, and stay on trails
- Many climbers voluntarily do not climb in June out of respect for tribal ceremonies
- Summer middays and weekends are busiest; early morning and evening are quieter and the light is better
- The prairie dogs are wild animals carrying disease, so do not feed or approach them
Details
Devils Tower, WY
Learn about Devils Tower National Monument
Bear Lodge and the tribes who hold it sacred
More than twenty Northern Plains tribes hold Devils Tower sacred, among them the Lakota, Cheyenne, Kiowa, Crow, Arapaho, and Shoshone. Many know it as Bear Lodge, or by names that mean the same, and it remains a living place of prayer, vision quests, and ceremony rather than a relic of the past.
A widely told story explains the tower and its columns. A group of children, in most versions young girls, were playing when a great bear began to chase them. They climbed onto a low rock and prayed, and the rock rose high into the sky to carry them out of reach. The bear leaped and clawed at the sides as it grew, and the deep vertical grooves in the stone are the marks of its claws. The name Devils Tower came from a mistranslation in the 1870s, and today tribes and the Park Service alike work to keep the older, truer names alive.
How a tower of stone came to stand alone
Devils Tower is made of a hard igneous rock that welled up as molten material deep underground and cooled slowly in place, tens of millions of years ago. As it cooled and shrank it fractured into the tall, many-sided columns you see today, some of the largest such columns anywhere in the world.
For a long time all of this was buried. Over millions of years the softer sedimentary rock and soil around the hard core wore away, carried off grain by grain by the Belle Fourche River and the weather, until the resistant tower was left standing high and alone. It is still slowly being uncovered, and fallen columns lie in a great boulder field around its foot.
Climbing, hiking, and the world at its base
Devils Tower is one of the most famous crack climbs in North America, first ascended in 1893 by two local ranchers using a wooden ladder pounded into a crack, and today drawing climbers from around the world to its long vertical routes. Out of respect for tribal ceremonies, many climbers honor a voluntary closure in the month of June.
You do not have to climb to feel the place. The paved Tower Trail circles the base in a little over a mile, winding through pine and boulder with the columns towering overhead. Longer trails loop out through the meadows and along the river, and the prairie dog town on the flats is a favorite stop, a whole village of burrows and lookouts.
Wildlife, seasons, and the night sky
The monument is a pocket of ponderosa pine, prairie, and riverbank, and it holds more life than its small size suggests. White-tailed and mule deer move through the trees, wild turkeys and songbirds fill the mornings, falcons and eagles ride the updrafts around the tower, and the prairie dog colony feeds hawks and the occasional coyote.
Summer brings the crowds and the climbers, with long warm evenings that light the tower gold. Fall is quiet and gold with turning leaves along the river. Winter is cold and still, the tower dusted with snow. On a clear night the sky here is very dark, and the tower under the stars is unforgettable, a scene made famous by the film Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
Closest Boutels
The closest Boutel™ stays, so you can turn this stop into an overnight. Each is an independently owned, editorially selected place to stay.
Things to Do Near Devils Tower
Hulett
About 9 miles northeast
A small ranch town near the tower, with a good local museum and an easygoing base for a visit.
Belle Fourche River
At the base
The river that helped uncover the tower, looping through cottonwoods below the monument.
Vore Buffalo Jump
About 35 miles southeast
A natural sinkhole where Plains tribes drove bison for centuries, now an active archaeological site.
Sundance
About 27 miles south
The town that gave the Sundance Kid his name, with a county museum and mountain trails nearby.