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Devils Tower (also known as Mato Tipila or Bear Lodge)" Mato Tipila, or Bear's Lodge, the stunning monolith of stone in northeastern Wyoming that settlers dubbed 'Devil's Tower. Jason Mark, Satellites in the High Country: Searching for the Wild in the Age of Man (2015), p. 166. "Devil's Tower, beyond the Black Hills, forms the Buffalo's Head, with the face, Bear Butte as the Buffalo's Nose, and Inyan Kaga as the Black Buffalo Horn." Jessica Dawn Palmer, The Dakota Peoples: A History of the Dakota, Lakota and Nakota through 1863 (2011), p. 203. is a butte, composed of igneous rock in the Bear Lodge Ranger District of the Black Hills, near Hulett and Sundance in Crook County, northeastern Wyoming, above the Belle Fourche River. It rises above the Belle Fourche River, standing from summit to base. The summit is above sea level.
Devils Tower National Monument was the first United States national monument, established on September 24, 1906, by President Theodore Roosevelt. The monument's boundary encloses an area of .
The name "Devil's Tower" originated in 1875 during an expedition led by Colonel Richard Irving Dodge, when his interpreter reportedly misinterpreted a native name to mean "Bad God's Tower"."Why is it called Devils Tower? Some Native Americans called it Mato Tipila, meaning Bear Lodge. Other Native American names include Bear's Tipi, Home of the Bear, Tree Rock and Great Gray Horn. In 1875, on an expedition led by Col. Dodge, it is believed his interpreter misinterpreted the name to mean Bad God's Tower, later shortened to Devils Tower." NPS Frequently Asked Questions, accessed July 22, 2008. All in that area use the name "Devils Tower", following a geographic naming standard whereby the apostrophe is omitted."Since its inception in 1890, the U.S. Board on Geographic Names has discouraged the use of the possessive form—the genitive apostrophe and the 's'. The possessive form using an 's' is allowed, but the apostrophe is almost always removed. The Board's archives contain no indication of the reason for this policy."
In 2005, a proposal to recognize several indigenous ties through the additional designation of the monolith as Bear Lodge National Historic Landmark were opposed by United States Representative Barbara Cubin, arguing that a "name change will harm the tourist trade and bring economic hardship to area communities". In November 2014, Arvol Looking Horse proposed renaming the geographical feature "Bear Lodge" and submitted the request to the United States Board on Geographic Names. A second proposal was submitted to request that the U.S. acknowledge what it described as the "offensive" mistake in keeping the current name and to rename the monument and sacred site into Bear Lodge National Historic Landmark. The formal public comment period ended in fall 2015. Local state senator Ogden Driskill opposed the change. PDFs include "Bear Lodge name change proposal" and "National Park Service information on name change". The name was not changed.
Geologists Carpenter and Russell studied Devils Tower in the late 19th century and came to the conclusion that it was formed by an Igneous rock Intrusive rock. In 1907, geologists Nelson Horatio Darton and C.C. O'Harra (of the South Dakota School of Mines) theorized that Devils Tower must be an eroded remnant of a laccolith.
The igneous material that forms the Tower is a phonolite porphyry intruded about 40.5 million years ago, a light to dark-gray or greenish-gray igneous rock with conspicuous crystals of white feldspar.Woolley, A. R. (1987). Alkaline Rocks and Carbonatites of the World, Part 1: North and South America. London, British Museum (Natural History), University of Texas Press, page 126 As the magma cooled, columns formed (though sometimes 4-, 5-, and 7-sided columns were possible), up to wide and tall.
As rain and snow continue to erode the sedimentary rocks surrounding the Tower's base, more of Devils Tower will be exposed. Nonetheless, the exposed portions of the Tower still experience certain amounts of erosion. Cracks along the columns are subject to water and ice erosion. Portions, or even entire columns, of rock at Devils Tower are continually breaking off and falling. Piles of broken columns, boulders, small rocks, and stones, called scree, lie at the base of the tower, indicating that it was once wider than it is today.
The geologically related Missouri Buttes are located northwest of Devils Tower.
According to the traditional beliefs of Native American peoples, the Kiowa and Lakota people, a group of girls went out to play and were spotted by several giant bears, who began to chase them. In an effort to escape the bears, the girls climbed atop a rock, fell to their knees, and prayed to the Great Spirit to save them. Hearing their prayers, the Great Spirit made the rock rise from the ground towards the heavens so that the bears could not reach the girls. The bears, in an effort to climb the rock, left deep claw marks in the sides, which had become too steep to climb. Those are the marks which appear today on the sides of Devils Tower. When the girls reached the sky, they were turned into the stars of the Pleiades.Robert Burnham, Jr.: Burnham's Celestial Handbook, Vol. 3, p. 1867
Another version tells that two Sioux boys wandered far from their village when Mato the bear, a huge creature that had claws the size of tipi poles, spotted them, and wanted to eat them for breakfast. He was almost upon them when the boys prayed to Wakan Tanka the Creator to help them. They rose up on a huge rock, while Mato tried to get up from every side, leaving huge scratch marks as he did. Finally, he sauntered off, disappointed and discouraged. The bear came to rest east of the Black Hills at what is now Bear Butte. Wanblee, the eagle, helped the boys off the rock and back to their village. A painting depicting this legend by artist Herbert A. Collins hangs over the fireplace in the visitor center at Devils Tower.
In a Cheyenne version of the story, the giant bear pursues the girls and kills most of them. Two sisters escape back to their home with the bear still tracking them. They tell two boys that the bear can only be killed with an arrow shot through the underside of its foot. The boys have the sisters lead the bear to Devils Tower and trick it into thinking they have climbed the rock. The boys attempt to shoot the bear through the foot while it repeatedly attempts to climb up and slides back down leaving more claw marks each time. The bear was finally scared off when an arrow came very close to its left foot. This last arrow continued to go up and never came down.Marquis, pp. 53–54
Wooden Leg, a Northern Cheyenne, recounted another legend told to him by an old man while they were traveling together past Devils Tower around 1866–1868. An Indigenous man decided to sleep at the base of Bear Lodge next to a buffalo head. In the morning, he discovered that both he and the buffalo head had been transported to the top of the rock by the Great Medicine, with no way to descend. He spent another day and night on the rock without food or water. After praying all day and then going to sleep, he awoke to find that the Great Medicine had brought him back down to the ground, but had left the buffalo head at the top near the edge. Wooden Leg asserted that the buffalo head was clearly visible through the old man's spyglass. At that time, the tower had never been climbed, and a buffalo head at the top was otherwise inexplicable.Marquis, pp. 54–55
The buffalo head gives this story special significance for the Northern Cheyenne. All the Cheyenne maintained in their camps a sacred teepee to the Great Medicine containing the tribal sacred objects. In the case of the Northern Cheyenne, the sacred object was a buffalo head.Marquis pp. 106, 152
N. Scott Momaday (Kiowa) was given the name Tsoai-talee (Rock Tree Boy) by Pohd-lohk, a Kiowa elder, linking the child to the Devils Tower bear myth. To reinforce this mythic connection, his parents took him there. Momaday incorporated the bear myth as unifying subtext into his 1989 novel The Ancient Child.
The first ascent using modern climbing techniques was made by Fritz Wiessner with Bill House and Lawrence Coveney in 1937. Wiessner led almost the entire climb free climbing, placing only a single piece of fixed gear, a piton, which he later regretted, deeming it unnecessary.
In 1941 George Hopkins parachuted onto Devils Tower, without permission, as a publicity stunt resulting from a bet. He had intended to descend by a rope dropped to him after successfully landing on the butte, but the package containing the rope, a sledgehammer and a car axle to be driven into the rock as an anchor point slid over the edge. As the weather deteriorated, a second attempt was made to drop equipment, but Hopkins deemed it unusable after the rope became snarled and frozen due to the rain and wind. Hopkins was stranded for six days, exposed to cold, rain and winds before a mountain rescue team led by Jack Durrance, who had successfully climbed Devils Tower in 1938, finally reached him and brought him down. His entrapment and rescue was widely covered by the media of the time.See for instance,
Today, hundreds of climbers scale the sheer rock walls of Devils Tower each summer. The most common route is the Durrance Route, which was the second free climbing route established in 1938. There are many established and documented covering every side of the tower, ascending the various vertical cracks and columns of the rock. The difficulty of these routes ranges from relatively easy to some of the most challenging in the world. All climbers are required to register with a park ranger before and after attempting a climb. No overnight camping at the summit is allowed; climbers return to base on the same day they ascend.
The Tower is sacred to several Plains tribes, including the Lakota people, Cheyenne and Kiowa. Because of this, many Native American leaders objected to climbers ascending the monument, considering this to be a desecration. The climbers argued that they had a right to climb the Tower, since it is on federal land. A compromise was eventually reached with a voluntary climbing ban during the month of June when the tribes are conducting ceremonies around the monument. Climbers are asked, but not required, to stay off the Tower in June. According to the PBS documentary In the Light of Reverence, approximately 85% of climbers honor the ban and voluntarily choose not to climb the Tower during the month of June. However, several climbers along with the Mountain States Legal Foundation sued the Park Service, claiming an inappropriate government entanglement with religion. Sacred Land Film Project, Devils Tower.
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