Qualla: Devils Tower National Monument

Devils Tower National Monument: Introduction

Tue, 27 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nathaniel H. Darton, Public domain. The Lakota name says it better: Mato Tipila, Bear Lodge. According to their telling, seven young girls once fled from a giant bear onto a rock that rose beneath their feet, lifting them toward the sky while the bear's claws gouged deep furrows into the stone. The girls became the Pleiades, the rock became this tower, and those claw marks remain visible today as hundreds of hexagonal columns stretching over 500 feet into the Wyoming sky. When a U.S. cavalry party arrived in 1876, they mistranslated the name as "Bad God's Tower," and the error has stuck ever since.

Image: Nathaniel H. Darton | Public domain

Devils Tower National Monument: First Among Monuments

Tue, 27 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit CC BY 2.5. Theodore Roosevelt made Devils Tower the nation's first national monument in 1906, setting a precedent that would eventually protect over 150 sites across America. The tower earned this distinction through sheer geological drama. Rising above the Belle Fourche River at the edge o...

Image: CC BY 2.5

Devils Tower National Monument: Sixty-Five Million Years in the Making

Tue, 27 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit NPS, Public domain. The tower is a laccolith, formed when molten magma pushed up through sedimentary rock about 65 million years ago. As the magma cooled, it contracted and cracked into the distinctive polygonal columns that characterize the tower today. These columns of phonolite lava resemble the ...

Image: NPS | Public domain

Devils Tower National Monument: Sacred Ground

Tue, 27 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jonathunder, Public domain. For the Lakota, Arapaho, Shoshone, Cheyenne, and Crow peoples, this place remains sacred. Tribal members make pilgrimages here to conduct ceremonies, from sweat lodges to sun dances. Prayer offerings appear along the trails as colorful cloths and bundles tied to trees, each repre...

Image: Jonathunder | Public domain

Devils Tower National Monument: Close Encounters

Tue, 27 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Chris Light, CC BY-SA 4.0. Steven Spielberg's production designer Joe Alves was scouting locations across the American West in 1976 when he stumbled upon Devils Tower. The obscure park with its otherworldly monolith proved perfect for Close Encounters of the Third Kind, where the tower served as the alien-...

Image: Chris Light | CC BY-SA 4.0

Devils Tower National Monument: The Living Landscape

Tue, 27 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit NPS, Public domain. Prairie falcons nest on the tower's upper reaches, leading to seasonal closures of some climbing routes. Prairie dog colonies populate the meadows along the approach roads, though visitors are warned to keep their distance due to plague risk. The surrounding Ponderosa pine forest...

Image: NPS | Public domain