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DAVID KINGHAM/Courtesy Flickr
evils Tower in Wyoming might not feature on glossy tourist brochures, but it’s one of those hidden gems of natural history visitors are nearly always glad to see. “What stays with you is the fact that it’s completely natural,” says Matt Franzblau, an avid traveler who has visited 47 of the 50 states in the United States. “It’s a huge structure of lava and volcanic remains, with nothing man-made or artificial about it.” The whole formation, about 1,267 feet tall, is America’s first National Monument—declared by President Theodore Roosevelt under the Antiquities Act of 1906.
Chance discovery
“
It’s a huge structure of lava and
volcanic
remains, with nothing man-made or artificial about it.
32 MAY/JUNE 2015
MIAOMIAO WANG/Courtesy Flickr
“While planning a trip to Yellowstone and Mount Rushmore, I chanced upon the Tower and the unique nature of the formation intrigued me,” says Priyanka
Jayashankar, adjunct assistant professor of management at Iowa State University. Steven Spielberg’s sci-fi movie, “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” was filmed in the area. The Tower, made from cooled magma that spilled out into the surrounding sedimentary rock layers, isn’t just about geology. The Native American tribes, in and around the area, have a spiritual and cultural connection with the Tower, and there are many legends about how it came into being. The Native American name for it is Mato Tipila, meaning Bear Lodge. The Tower is considered a sacred worship site, with colorful prayer cloths often found
tied to the trees near the base. According to the National Park Service, a translator in an 1875 expedition misinterpreted the name to mean Bad God’s Tower, which later came to be known as Devils Tower. “It’s this mix of incredibly rich history and nature that makes the Tower so interesting,” says Ed Timms, lecturer in the journalism department of The University of Texas at Austin. “It has these deep grooves on the side which look like scratches made by a bear. It is a part of a legend that says a huge bear once chased a group of young Indian girls, who climbed onto the peak to stay safe. They were believed to have been carried away by the Great