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The Milky Way Over Devil's Tower
Credit & Copyright: Wally Pacholka (TWAN)
Explanation: Was Devil's Tower once an explosive volcano? Famous for its appearance in films such as Close Encounters, the origin of Devil's Tower in Wyoming, USA is still debated, with a leading hypothesis holding that it is a hardened lava plume that probably never reached the surface to become a volcano. The lighter rock that once surrounded the dense volcanic neck has now eroded away, leaving the dramatic tower. High above, the central band of the Milky Way galaxy arches across the sky. Many notable sky objects are visible, including dark strands of the Pipe Nebula and the reddish Lagoon Nebula to the tower's right. Green grass and trees line the foreground, while moon-illuminated clouds appear near the horizon to the tower's left. Unlike many other international landmarks, mountaineers are permitted to climb Devil's Tower.
9/2019 - Devil's Tower, Wyoming
This igneous butte rises 867 ft from base to summit and is held sacred by many American Indians and others.
The best view I found for Devil's Tower. We did a bit of driving around the country roads of Devil's Tower and I found this area. I think the "boys" look pretty good after hiking the perimeter base trail of Devil's Tower, about 1 & 1/3 miles. The boys said this hike was one of their favorite things to do on our mini vacation.
In 1906 President Teddy Roosevelt designated Devils Tower as our 1st national monument. The tower was formed by magma which cooled underground and was later exposed after millions of years of erosion.
Totally magnificent sight out there rising above the rolling hills...Close Encounters of the Third Kind to be sure!
Devils Tower (Lakota: Matȟó ThÃpila ("Bear Lodge") or Ptehé Ǧà ("Brown Buffalo Horn") (Arapaho: Wox Niiinon) is an igneous intrusion or laccolith 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 5,114 feet (1,559 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.
In recent years, about 1% of the Monument's 400,000 annual visitors climb Devils Tower, mostly using traditional climbing techniques.
The information above comes from Wikipedia:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devils_Tower
Devils Tower (Lakota: Matȟó ThÃpila ("Bear Lodge") or Ptehé Ǧà ("Brown Buffalo Horn") (Arapaho: Wox Niiinon) is an igneous intrusion or laccolith 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 5,114 feet (1,559 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.
In recent years, about 1% of the Monument's 400,000 annual visitors climb Devils Tower, mostly using traditional climbing techniques.
The information above comes from Wikipedia:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devils_Tower
A legend of Devil's Tower
A Brule Sioux Legend
Out of the plains of Wyoming rises Devil's Tower. It is really a rock, visible for hundreds of miles around, an immense cone of basalt which seems to touch the clouds. It sticks out of the flat prairie as if someone had pushed it up from underground.
Of course, Devil's Tower is a white man's name. We have no devil in our beliefs and got along well all these many centuries without him. You people invented the devil and, as far as I'm concerned, you can keep him. But everybody these days knows that towering rock by this name, so Devil's Tower it is.
No use telling you its Indian name. Most tribes call it bear rock. There is a reason for that - if you see it, you will notice on its sheer sides many, many streaks and gashes running straight up and down, like scratches made by giant claws.
Well, long, long ago, two young Indian boys found themselves lost in the prairie. You know how it is. They had played shinny ball and whacked it a few hundred yards out of the village. And then they had shot their toy bows still farther out into the sagebrush. And then they had heard a small animal make a noise and had gone to investigate.
They had come to a stream with many colorful pebbles and followed that for a while. They had come to a hill and wanted to see what was on the other side. On the other side they saw a herd of antelope and, of course, had to track them for a while.
When they got hungry and thought it was time to go home, the two boys found that they didn't know where they were. They started off in the direction where they thought their village was, but only got farther and farther away from it. At last they curled up beneath a tree and went to sleep.
They got up the next morning and walked some more, still headed the wrong way. They ate some wild berries and dug up wild turnips, found some choke-cherries, and drank water from streams. For three days they walked toward the west. They were footsore, but they survived.
Oh, how they wished that their parents, or aunts or uncles, or elder brothers and sisters would find them. But nobody did.
On the fourth day the boys suddenly had a feeling that they were being followed. They looked around and in the distance saw Mato, the bear. This was no ordinary bear, but a giant grizzly so huge that the two boys would only make a small mouthful for him, but he had smelled the boys and wanted that mouthful. He kept coming close, and the earth trembled as he gathered speed.
The boys started running, looking for a place to hide, but there was no such place and the grizzly was much, much faster than they.
They stumbled, and the bear was almost upon them. They could see his red, wide-open jaws full of enormous, wicked teeth. They could smell his hot, evil breath. The boys were old enough to have learned to pray, and they called upon Wakan Tanka, the Creator: "Tunkashila, Grandfather, have pity, save us."
All at once the earth shook and began to rise. The boys rose with it. Out of the earth came a cone of rock going up, up until it was more than a thousand feet high. And the boys were on top of it. Mato the bear was disappointed to see his meal disappearing into the clouds.
Have I said he was a giant bear? This grizzly was so huge that he could almost reach to the top of the rock, trying to get up, trying to get those boys. As he did so, he made big scratches in the sides of the towering rock. But the stone was too slippery; Mato could not get up. He tried every spot, every side. He scratched up the rock all around, but it was no use. The boys watched him wearing himself out, getting tired, giving up. They finally saw him going away, a huge, growling, grunting mountain of fur disappearing over the horizon.
The boys were saved. Or were they? How were they to get down? They were humans, not birds who could fly.
Some ten years ago, mountain climbers tried to conquer Devil's Tower. They had ropes, and iron hooks called pitons to nail themselves to the rockface, and they managed to get up. But they couldn't get down. They were marooned on that giant basalt cone, and they had to be taken off in a helicopter. In the long-ago days the Indians had no helicopters.
So how did the two boys get down? The legend does not tell us, but we can be sure that the Great Spirit didn't save those boys only to let them perish of hunger and thirst on the top of the rock.
Well, Wanblee, the eagle, has always been a friend to our people. So it must have been the eagle that let the boys grab hold of him and carried them safely back to their village.
Or do you know another way?
- Told by Lame Deer in Winner, Rosebud Sioux Indian Reservation, South Dakota, 1969.
9/2019 - Devil's Tower, Wyoming
This igneous butte rises 867 ft from base to summit and is held sacred by many American Indians and others.
Bear Lodge Butte, known more commonly as Devil's Tower, is the core of an extinct ancient volcano, and is sacred to the many indigenous tribes of the surrounding region, who have revered it as a sacred site for millennia. The butte stands 867 feet (264 meters) tall, and rises 1,267 feet (386 meters) atop a stone outcrop above the adjacent Belle Fourche River. The butte became a National Monument in 1906, owing to its significance as a natural geologic formation, but unfortunately, this did not include the similar, though less eroded, Missouri Buttes to the northwest.
The butte is a dramatic rock formation that rises out of the surrounding landscape and is visible from miles away. Surrounded by a bluff made of sedimentary rock, the butte towers over the grassy lowlands along the Belle Fourche River, today home to wildlife, including a colony of prairie dogs. The butte stands out among the surrounding lowlands, being visible from roadways miles away, enticing tourists to stop at pull-outs to take photos and marvel at the majesty of the butte.
The butte is known to the local indigenous tribes as the "Bear's House" or "Bear Lodge," but was given the name "Devil's Tower" by a European-American visitor to the area, who misinterpreted the indigenous names of the butte. There have been ongoing efforts since the early 21st Century to change the name back to "Bear Lodge," but these have been opposed by government officials due to fears of decreased tourism.