Devils Tower, Wy., 2004.

On a long and lonesome highway, north of Omaha, we’d been listening to the engine moanin’ out its one long song… for days. On the surface, there doesn’t seem to be much of anything across the Great Plains, except a razor-slice of highway, the occasional rest stop and billboard and a seemingly endless fleet of electric windmills across the horizon (and some random awesome-weird roadside art, but that’s for another post).

So what made us take this long and arduous journey?

The devil. The devil made us do it.

Devils Tower is  a geological curiosity that protrudes majestically from the valleys at the edge of the Black Hills in Wyoming. In other words, it’s a big, oddly-shaped rock that’s really hard to miss.

Scientists have several theories on how the tower was formed, but most agree it was pushed up from underground after the sea that once covered the area receded and centuries of erosion (and possibly magma) took over. The distinctive striated “columns” all around the tower were etched into the soft rock over millions of years (some Native American lore attributes the “scratches” to bear claws).

Native Americans have some wonderful folklore around it, too. One story tells of a great spirit raising the rock from the ground to save children who were being chased by a bear. Different tribes also had different names for it: the Cheyenne know it as “Bear’s Lodge,” the Kiowa call it “Tree Rock” and the Lakota refer to it as “Ghost Mountain,” among other nicknames. The name “Devils Tower” evolved from what was probably a bungled translation of “Bad God’s Tower.” Understandably, many Native American groups are upset that the “official” name of this sacred place references our old friend Beelzebub. But the name stuck, thanks to the white dudes in charge, and Teddy Roosevelt declared the site a National Monument in 1906. (Special note to grammar nerds: The apostrophe left out of “Devils” was a typo that was just never corrected.)

Today, it continues to be a place of spiritual and cultural importance for the Native American tribes that still populate the area. We found brightly colored ribbons, prayer flags and small bundles tied to tree branches all around the tower. These represent prayers and are placed as part of religious ceremonies.

(Annnnd, I just read that it’s insensitive to photograph the prayer tokens, so I am very sorry about the picture on the above left. Let’s pretend it didn’t happen.)

Another familiar site in the Devils Tower vicinity: prairie dogs! These adorable little scamps live in elaborate tunneled burrows underground and pop their heads out periodically, whack-a-mole style, and charm the pants off of everyone.

Oh yeah, you may also recognize the tower from Close Encounters of the Third Kind! Richard Dreyfuss obsessively made models of it out of mashed potatoes and trash cans and shrubs before he discovered it was to be the landing site for an extraterrestrial craft. (His wife, played by Teri Garr, was kind of a B about the whole thing.)

 

There are plenty of your standard National Park offerings at the monument: hiking trails, ranger talks, skiing and snowshoeing in the winter, stargazing tours. Some nutballs even opt to climb this thing!

 

It was a beautiful day for our visit, the final stop on our Great Plains road trip before turning around to head home. We had a little close encounter of our own and hit the happy trials. Definitely worth the trip.