On the 26th, we had traveled northeast from Jackson WY to Buffalo WY, a 336 mile, 6 hour trip, on our way to Devils Tower National Monument. An awesome sight! While their are numerous hills in the area, the tower stands out and can be seen from miles away.
The name, Devils Tower, was apparently a misinterpretation of the Indian name. On the very first map of the area, it was properly named Bear Lodge, which is what the Indians called it (along with Bear Tipi and several others). But a later map on a more detailed expedition labelled it as "Devil's Tower" and that was the name that stuck with the public. To this day, the Indians/Native Americans take exception to the name.
The tower is comprised of many joined, upright columns or shafts of igneous rock. These columns can be 15-20 feet around and up to 600 feet long (tall). While other similar towers exist, none have columns as large in width or height as Devils Tower.
Factoid: Wonder why it's called "Devils Tower" and not "Devil's Tower"? The reason is that the official bill/proclamation naming it as a national monument had a typo and left out the apostrophe so it officially became "Devils Tower" (plural, not possessive). There's never been a bill or resolution introduced to change it.
If you've ever seen the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind, you've seen Devils Tower. It was the mountain that Richard Dreyfuss' character obsessed on, and the place where the aliens landed. But they took a lot of liberties, as always. In the movie, the mountain top is a bowl where they placed trailers, etc in preparation for the aliens' landing. In reality, the top is somewhat rounded. Anyway, I'm going to want to watch the movie again sometime.
After walking the trail around the base of the tower and taking many pictures (I'll add some later when I can), we jumped back in the car to complete the day's travel to Medora ND, which I'm sure 99.99% of you have never heard of. It's explained in the next blog page.
That's all for now ..... Dan
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