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42-774: Devils Tower (also known as Bear Lodge ) is a butte , possibly laccolithic , 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 1,267 feet (386 m) above the Belle Fourche River, standing 867 feet (264 m) from summit to base. The summit is 5,112 feet (1,558 m) above sea level. Devils Tower National Monument
84-407: 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
126-512: A butte ( / b juː t / ) is an isolated hill with steep, often vertical sides and a small, relatively flat top; buttes are smaller landforms than mesas , plateaus , and tablelands . The word butte comes from the French word butte , meaning knoll (but of any size); its use is prevalent in the Western United States , including the southwest where mesa ( Spanish for "table")
168-408: A Rock" ( Kiowa ), "Tree Rock", "Great Gray Horn", and "Brown Buffalo Horn" ( Lakota : Ptehé Ǧí ). 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". All information signs in that area use the name "Devils Tower", following a geographic naming standard whereby
210-410: A bet. He had intended to descend by a 1,000-foot (300 m) rope dropped to him after successfully landing on the butte, but the package containing the rope, a sledge hammer 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
252-500: 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 , 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
294-437: 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
336-755: Is a fine-grained equivalent of nepheline syenite . They are products of partial melting, are silica-undersaturated, and have feldspathoids in their normative mineralogy . Mineral assemblages in phonolite occurrences are usually abundant feldspathoids ( nepheline , sodalite , hauyne , leucite and analcite ) and alkali feldspar ( sanidine , anorthoclase or orthoclase ), and rare sodic plagioclase . Biotite , sodium-rich amphiboles and pyroxenes along with iron-rich olivine are common minor minerals. Accessory phases include titanite , apatite , corundum , zircon , magnetite and ilmenite . Phonolite's characteristic dark color comes from its concentration of dark pyroxenes such as aegirine and augite. Blairmorite
378-548: Is a variation of the igneous rock trachyte that contains nepheline or leucite rather than quartz. It has an unusually high (12% or more) Na 2 O + K 2 O content, defining its position in the TAS classification of igneous rocks. Its coarse grained (phaneritic) intrusive equivalent is nepheline syenite . Phonolite is typically fine grained and compact. The name phonolite comes from the Ancient Greek meaning "sounding stone" due to
420-861: Is an analcite-rich variety of phonolite. Nepheline syenites and phonolites occur widely distributed throughout the world in Canada, Norway, Greenland , Sweden, the United Kingdom , the Ural Mountains , the Pyrenees , Italy, Eifel and Kaiserstuhl in Germany, Brazil , the Transvaal region, the Magnet Cove igneous complex of Arkansas , the Beemerville Complex of New Jersey , as well as on oceanic islands such as
462-431: Is credited to William Rogers and Willard Ripley, local ranchers in the area. They completed this first ascent after constructing a ladder of wooden pegs driven into cracks in the rock face. A few of these wooden pegs are still intact and are visible on the tower when hiking along the 1.3-mile (2.1 km) Tower Trail at Devils Tower National Monument. Over the following 30 years, many climbs were made using this method before
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#1733086048256504-448: Is eventually worn away. The harder rock on top of the butte resists erosion. The caprock provides protection for the less resistant rock below from wind abrasion which leaves it standing isolated. As the top is further eroded by abrasion and weathering, the excess material that falls off adds to the scree or talus slope around the base. On a much smaller scale, the same process forms hoodoos . The Mitten Buttes of Monument Valley in
546-543: 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
588-481: Is the Durrance Route , which was the second free route established in 1938. There are many established and documented climbing routes covering every side of the tower, ascending the various vertical cracks and columns of the rock. The difficulty of these routes range 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
630-429: Is used for the larger landform. Due to their distinctive shapes, buttes are frequently landmarks in plains and mountainous areas. To differentiate the two landforms, geographers use the rule of thumb that a mesa has a top that is wider than its height, while a butte has a top that is narrower than its height. Buttes form by weathering and erosion when hard caprock overlies a layer of less resistant rock that
672-604: The Bushveld Igneous Complex , possibly formed from partial melting of the wall rocks adjacent to that large ultramafic layered intrusion . Phonolite occurs in the related Pilanesberg Complex and Pienaars River Complex. Phonolites can be of interest as dimension stone or as aggregate for gravels. Rarely, economically mineralised phonolite-nepheline syenite alkaline complexes can be associated with rare-earth mineralisation, uranium mineralisation and phosphates , such as at Phalaborwa, South Africa . Phonolite tuff
714-1009: The Canary Islands . Phonolite is common across Europe, particularly within the Eifel Plateau and the Laacher See. It is also found in the Czech Republic and the Mediterranean area near Italy. For localities in the United States, phonolite can be found in the Black Hills Forest in South Dakokta. The most well known phonolite-composed natural structure is the Devil's Tower , found in Wyoming. Nepheline-normative rocks occur in close association with
756-768: The Sutter Buttes in California . In many cases, buttes have been given other names that do not use the word butte , for example, Courthouse Rock , Nebraska. Also, some large hills that are technically not buttes have names using the word, examples of which are Kamiak Butte , Chelan Butte and Steptoe Butte in Washington state . Phonolite Phonolite is an uncommon shallow intrusive or extrusive rock , of intermediate chemical composition between felsic and mafic , with texture ranging from aphanitic (fine-grained) to porphyritic (mixed fine- and coarse-grained). Phonolite
798-538: The Utah – Arizona state line are two of the most distinctive and widely recognized buttes. Monument Valley and the Mittens provided backgrounds in the scenes of many western-themed films , including seven movies directed by John Ford . Another very well-known and frequently photographed butte in northern Arizona is Thumb Butte , which overlooks the city of Prescott and is the most prominent and distinctive geologic landmark in
840-421: 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 . As the magma cooled, hexagonal columns formed (though sometimes 4-, 5-, and 7-sided columns were possible), up to 20 feet (6.1 m) wide and 600 feet (180 m) tall. As rain and snow continue to erode the sedimentary rocks surrounding
882-405: 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
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#1733086048256924-405: The apostrophe is omitted. 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
966-474: The base of Bear Lodge next to a buffalo head. In the morning he found that both he and the buffalo head had been transported to the top of the rock by the Great Medicine with no way down. He spent another day and night on the rock with no food or water. After he had prayed all day and then gone to sleep, he awoke to find that the Great Medicine had brought him back down to the ground, but left the buffalo head at
1008-509: 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. Wooden Leg , a Northern Cheyenne, related another legend told to him by an old man as they were traveling together past the Devils Tower around 1866–1868. An Indigenous man decided to sleep at
1050-515: 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
1092-836: The case of the Northern Cheyenne, the sacred object was a buffalo head. 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 . Fur trappers may have visited Devils Tower, but they left no written evidence of having done so. The first documented non-Indigenous visitors were members of Captain William F. Raynolds 's 1859 expedition to Yellowstone . Sixteen years later, Colonel Richard I. Dodge escorted an Office of Indian Affairs scientific survey party to
1134-530: The change. The name was not changed. The landscape surrounding Devils Tower is composed mostly of sedimentary rocks . The oldest rocks visible in Devils Tower National Monument were laid down in a shallow sea during the Triassic . This dark red sandstone and maroon siltstone , interbedded with shale , can be seen along the Belle Fourche River . Oxidation of iron minerals causes the redness of
1176-461: The existing sedimentary rock layers. Geologists Carpenter and Russell studied Devils Tower in the late 19th century and came to the conclusion that it was formed by an igneous intrusion . 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
1218-620: The formal geographer's rule are Scotts Bluff in Nebraska which is a collection of five bluffs, Crested Butte , which is a 12,168 ft (3,709 m) mountain in Colorado , and Elephant Butte , which is now an island in Elephant Butte Reservoir in New Mexico . Among the well-known non-flat-topped buttes in the United States are Bear Butte , South Dakota , Black Butte , Oregon , and
1260-503: 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
1302-426: The ladder fell into disrepair. The first ascent using modern climbing techniques was made by Fritz Wiessner with William P. House and Lawrence Coveney in 1937. Wiessner led almost the entire climb free , 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
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1344-759: The liberation of aluminium, potassium, sodium and calcium by melting of feldspar , with some involvement of mafic minerals. Because the rock is silica- undersaturated , it has no quartz or other silica crystals , and is dominated by low-silica feldspathoid minerals more than feldspar minerals. A few geological processes and tectonic events can melt the necessary precursor rocks to form phonolite. These include intracontinental hotspot volcanism, such as may form above mantle plumes covered by thick continental crust . A-type granites and alkaline igneous provinces usually occur alongside phonolites. Low-degree partial melting of underplates of granitic material in collisional orogenic belts may also produce phonolites. Phonolite
1386-588: The massive rock formation and coined the name Devils Tower. Recognizing its unique characteristics, the United States Congress designated the area a U.S. forest reserve in 1892 and in 1906 Devils Tower became the nation's first National monument . As of 1994, climbing Devils Tower had increased in popularity. About 1.3% of the monument's 400,000 annual visitors climbed Devils Tower, mostly using traditional climbing techniques. The first known ascent of Devils Tower by any method occurred on July 4, 1893, and
1428-472: The metallic sound it produces if an unfractured plate is hit; hence, the English name clinkstone is given as a synonym. Unusually, phonolite forms from magma with a relatively low silica content, generated by low degrees of partial melting (less than 10%) of highly aluminous rocks of the lower crust such as tonalite , monzonite and metamorphic rocks . Melting of such rocks to a very low degree promotes
1470-644: 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. Devils Tower National Monument protects many species of wildlife, such as white-tailed deer , prairie dogs , and bald eagles . Four areas of Devils Tower National Monument are on the National Register of Historic Places : Butte In geomorphology ,
1512-438: The rain and wind. Hopkins was stranded for six days, exposed to cold, rain and 50 mph (80 km/h) 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. Today, hundreds of climbers scale the sheer rock walls of Devils Tower each summer. The most common route
1554-770: The rocks. This rock layer is known as the Spearfish Formation . Above the Spearfish Formation is a thin band of white gypsum , called the Gypsum Springs Formation , Jurassic in age. Overlying this formation is the Sundance Formation . During the Paleocene Epoch, 56 to 66 million years ago, the Rocky Mountains and the Black Hills were uplifted. Magma rose through the crust , intruding into
1596-520: The sides of Devils Tower. When the girls reached the sky, they were turned into the stars of the Pleiades . 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
1638-479: The top near the edge. Wooden Leg maintained that the buffalo head was clearly visible through the old man's spyglass. At the time, the tower had never been climbed and a buffalo head at the top was otherwise inexplicable. 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
1680-478: The tower, indicating that it was once wider than it is today. The geologically related Missouri Buttes are located 3.5 mi (5.6 km) northwest of Devils Tower. Devils Tower inspired many geomyths . According to the traditional beliefs of Native American peoples, the Kiowa and Lakota , 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
1722-430: The vicinity. The Devils Tower in northeastern Wyoming is a laccolithic butte composed of igneous rock rather than sandstone , limestone or other sedimentary rocks . The term butte is sometimes applied more broadly to isolated, steep-sided hills with pointed or craggy, rather than flat, tops. Three notable formations that are either named butte or may be considered buttes even though they do not conform to
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1764-469: Was the first United States national monument , established on September 24, 1906, by President Theodore Roosevelt . The monument's boundary encloses an area of 1,347 acres (545 ha). Indigenous names for the monolith include "Bear's House" or "Bear's Lodge" (or "Bear's Tipi ", "Home of the Bear", "Bear's Lair"); Cheyenne , Lakota : Matȟó Thípila , Crow : Daxpitcheeaasáao ("Home of Bears"), "Aloft on
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