The Project Gutenberg eBook ofDevils Tower National Monument, Wyoming (1984)

The Project Gutenberg eBook ofDevils Tower National Monument, Wyoming (1984)This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.Title: Devils Tower National Monument, Wyoming (1984)Author: United States. National Park ServiceRelease date: January 1, 2019 [eBook #58587]Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by Stephen Hutcheson and the Online DistributedProofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DEVILS TOWER NATIONAL MONUMENT, WYOMING (1984) ***

This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.

Title: Devils Tower National Monument, Wyoming (1984)Author: United States. National Park ServiceRelease date: January 1, 2019 [eBook #58587]Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by Stephen Hutcheson and the Online DistributedProofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

Title: Devils Tower National Monument, Wyoming (1984)

Author: United States. National Park Service

Release date: January 1, 2019 [eBook #58587]

Language: English

Credits: Produced by Stephen Hutcheson and the Online DistributedProofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DEVILS TOWER NATIONAL MONUMENT, WYOMING (1984) ***

Handbook 111Devils TowerDevils Tower National MonumentWyomingProduced by theDivision of PublicationsNational Park ServiceU.S. Department of the InteriorWashington, D.C. 1984

Devils Tower National MonumentWyoming

Produced by theDivision of PublicationsNational Park Service

U.S. Department of the InteriorWashington, D.C. 1984

National Park Handbooks, compact introductions to the great natural and historic places administered by the National Park Service, are designed to promote understanding and enjoyment of the parks. Each is intended to be informative reading and a useful guide before, during, and after a park visit. More than 100 titles are in print. This is Handbook 111. You may purchase the handbooks through the mail by writing to Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington DC 20402.

Devils Tower National Monument is in the Black Hills of northeastern Wyoming. The major attractions are the volcanic rock Tower and protected prairie dog communities. This handbook is published in support of the National Park Service’s management policies and interpretive programs at the park. Part 1 of the handbook gives a brief introduction to the park and its history; Part 2 takes a close look at the area’s natural history and, in particular, prairie dogs; and Part 3 presents concise travel guide and reference materials.

Main entry under title:

Rising nearly straight up from the plains, Devils Tower accentuates the differences in the scale of life. The snow-dusted, volcanic sentinel dwarfs the forest at its base.

Smaller still, and requiring our closer look in different seasons, are butterflies, flowers, and, below, pine seedlings.

Pine seedlings.

Devils Tower rises dramatically and abruptly out of the Black Hills above the Belle Fourche River in northeastern Wyoming. These Black Hills are an island in the Great Plains, the heart of the American West. The aura of this West and of its history, folklore, and legend is a fondly nurtured American treasure. Never just The West, it is rather the Scenic West, or the Old West, or the True West, and of course the Wild West. Each epithet suggests that no one can pay homage to the region without resorting to its curious mixture of the known and the unknown, of truth and myth. Here is a land of blue skies, magnificent rock formations, and a clear, dry atmosphere that easily confuses and distorts your sense of distance. It is a land of mountain views, long probing rivers, deserts, and high plains and space—great unfathomable oceans of space. The West is the archetypal outdoors whose recreation possibilities forever grip the modern imagination.

A trip to Devils Tower National Monument is a trip to Wyoming, a state fully proud of its Western traditions. Car license plates display the bucking bronco to advertise “the land of the cowboy,” a motif repeated in many public places and widely observed in the casual manner of its people.

A trip to Devils Tower is also a trip to the Black Hills, an island of life rising out of the more arid Great Plains. Devils Tower sits on the Black Hills’ western fringe and is in fact the area’s most remarkable landmark. The Tower still evokes the mystery of this land where whites feared to travel until as late as 1876, the year General George Armstrong Custer and his cavalry fought—and were annihilated—in the battle of the Little Big Horn River in Montana. This last great victory of the Sioux and Cheyenne who refused reservation life made them hunted outlaws among whites. Their relatives on reservations soon gave away the tribal lands and with this went the Indians’ last hope of remaining free to travel and hunt from their revered Black Hills base.

To speak of history in Wyoming is to speak of a mere hundred years. Events in the settlement are so recent that many residents can recite them as part of their family history. Before that are theoral histories of the Sioux, Cheyenne, Shoshone, Crow, and other tribes whose dates of occupation are but vaguely known.

Gold discoveries in today’s South Dakota portion of the Black Hills forced the final clash with the plains tribes. Custer had confirmed gold reports and the pressure of the excited rush that followed broke the government’s earlier treaty resolve to preserve forever the Indians’ sovereignty over the Black Hills.

Settlers carrying American civilization to the West by the overland route to California, Oregon Territory, and Mormon Utah then quickly flowed into this backwater area. As the frenzied furor over Black Hills gold diminished and mines and creeks played out, homesteaders settled on lands parceled out for ranches. Along the Belle Fourche River, where the plains Indian tribes had sometimes spent winters, a new era opened under this brooding tower of rock called Mateo Tepee.

Place names in the West can be powerfully suggestive of history, but they can also be very unreliable; Devils Tower for instance. To the Indians this singular occurrence of dramatically upthrust rock marked the dwelling place of bears, hence Mateo Tepee or “Bear Lodge.” Their stories told of lost youngsters who were chased by a giant bear and climbed on top of a rock in a last desperate effort to save themselves. The children appealed to the spirits and the rock grew up out of the ground to lift the children out of the giant bear’s reach. Versions of this story belong to different tribes, but most have in common the bear’s futile attempt to claw its way to the top. This clawing left permanent grooves on the Tower.

Colonel Richard I. Dodge apparently had not heard these stories when he entered the Black Hills in 1875. In charge of a large military escort to a scientific team, he came in violation of Indian treaty rights after Custer’s 1874 expedition which had reported gold. Dodge noted that his questions to the Indians about this “terra incognita” known as the Black Hills were met with “studied silence.” This only heightened a true explorer’s curiosity. Perhaps the Indian scouts affected a calculated silence, hoping the whites would leave. When the great rock tower first loomed in sight, they toldDodge it was named, “with proper modification by our surveyors,” the Devils Tower. In later years few could recall why this name was used.

If it was meant to scare off these white explorers and those to follow, it did not. The new wave of American settlers did not believe that natural objects held supernatural powers. No matter how awesome or unusual, science had an explanation for everything in nature, or would eventually. Devils Tower was determined to be the core of an ancient volcano, an obelisk of volcanic trachyte, with sides so straight that one “could only look upward in despair of ever planting his feet on the top,” as one geologist in Dodge’s expedition put it.

The desire to conquer and tame nature, the view that men could use up natural things and discard them without asking the spirits, differed greatly from Indian concepts. While the tools and equipment of an advanced civilization could not be resisted, the explanation white men gave for their world could never satisfy the Indians. How uncomfortable it must have been for them when they were asked to relate their tribal stories of places such as Mateo Tepee, about which there could be no “proof!” One day a man would find a way to plant his feet on top of Devils Tower, and it would be hailed as a personal feat of strength and daring having nothing to do with the spirit of the bear that dwelt within his lodge.

In the 20-year period after the opening of the Black Hills, cowmen and sheepherders discovered the hilly prairies and spacious grasslands that spread from the Belle Fourche River as far west as the Big Horn Mountains. Cattle trailed up from Texas flourished into great herds that freely roamed the open range. The Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad extended its line from Nebraska northwestward to Gillette, which quickly became the system’s largest shipping point. As many as 12,000 beef cattle and 40,000 head of sheep at a time waited at the railroad to be sent to eastern meatpackers. Wyoming became a state in 1890, its history already indelibly colored by the cowboy lifestyle and territorial range feuds.

Cowboy songs and stories of Western American folklore often mentioned the Belle Fourche River. The first ranchers to settle along it established small-scale cattle outfits centered about Hulett within sight of Devils Tower. These early-day settlers may nothave revered the Tower as the Indians did, but neither were they disposed to see it exploited for private gain. There was enough feeling to cause Wyoming’s Senator Francis E. Warren to introduce into the U.S. Senate in July of 1892 a bill to establish Devils Tower National Park. Congressional support for the bill fizzled, but the General Land Office in Washington had already withdrawn from settlement several sections of land adjoining the Tower and the Little Missouri Buttes to the northwest. Protection of Devils Tower was at least temporarily assured.

The same year the park bill failed, two men now famous in the history of the West traveled to Devils Tower hoping against hope like any other tourists that it would match their own expectations. Photographer William H. Jackson had been commissioned by the State of Wyoming to photograph the State’s scenic attractions for the World’s Columbian Exposition the next year in Chicago. With him traveled a friend, the landscape painter Thomas Moran. Their round trip from the railhead at Gillette, by horse-drawn wagon lasted four days. Moran described the adventure in a magazine article illustrated by his drawings, and a Jackson photo of the Tower ended up in Chicago. In their one afternoon there, they had produced the first widely known visual records of Devils Tower.

Jackson and Moran’s unceremonious visit to the Tower in 1892 was undoubtedly forgotten in the rush of excitement the next year. Homesteaders, ranchers, and cowhands and their families flocked in unusual numbers to celebrate Independence Day at Devils Tower. Handbills called the Tower one of the greatest natural wonders in the United States and announced that “the rarest sight of a lifetime” would be observed at the festivities. The news obviously spread far, for more than 1,000 people made the trip.

The ballyhoo surrounded William Rogers. A local cowboy, he became, as far as anybody knew, the first human being to set foot on top of the Tower. He and a climbing partner, Willard Ripley, made the ascent by way of a wooden ladder they had worked on all that spring for the first 107 meters (350 feet) of the Tower. Those who knew the tall and raw-boned Rogers said he was never afraid of man or devil. After ceremonies on the ground, he and Ripley scrambled over the boulder field and started up the ladder with the cheers of the crowd presumably ringing in their ears. The climb took only an hour, the riskiest part of the business having been accomplished in the days preceding the event.

While the Tower draws our eyes upward, playful prairie dogs invite us to look downward—to their burrows on the level grassland between the Tower and the Belle Fourche River.

These communal animals are forever on the alert against such predators as the screech owl.

William Rogers, above right, relaxes at the Tower with his wife, stepdaughter, and dog. Rogers and Willard Ripley, the first persons to climb to the summit, had driven wooden pegs into a vertical crack between two columns on the southeast side and connected the outer edge of the pegs with a wooden strip. Mrs. Rogers used the ladder exactly two years later to become the first woman to reach the top. The last to use it, in 1927, was Babe White, who was known for his exploits climbing city skyscrapers. Remnants of the ladder can still be seen today.

The handbill for the first ascent, on July 4, 1893, touted the event as better than the World’s Fair.

DEVIL’S TOWERONE OF THEGREATEST NATURAL WONDERSof theUNITED STATESSituated inCROOK COUNTY, WYOMING.The Devil’s Tower is a perpendicular column of rock and no human being has ever stepped on its top.On July 4th, 1893, Old Glory will be hung to the breeze from the top of the Tower, 800 feet from the ground by Wm. Rogers.The committee and citizens of Crook County have organized the July 4th programme.SPEAKERS:Hon. N. K. Griggs.Beatrice, Neb.Col. Wm. R. Steele.Deadwood, So. Dak.Presentation of costume to Mr. Rogers by ladies of Deadwood, So. Dak.Presentation of Flag to be floated on the Tower by ladies of Spearfish, So. Dak.Marshal of the Day:E. B. Armstrong.Sheriff, Crook CountyAids to Marshal:Chas. Williams,Hulett.Harry Stevens,Barrett.John Mahnken,Eothen.Ed. Ludlow,Beulah.Wm. H. Southerland,Riverdale.Emd Krouse,Inyan Kara.Mead Fish,Black Buttes.R. Williams,Williams Divide.E. L. Burke,Tower.Ed. Fitch,Gillette.Leroy Salisbury,Linden.Tom Nefsy,Linden.A. S. Bender,Alva.THERE WILL BE PLENTYTOEATANDDRINKON THEGROUNDS.LOTS OF HAY AND GRAIN FOR HORSES.Dancing day and night.Perfect order will be maintained. The rarest sight of a life time will be observed, and the 4th of July will be better spent at the Devil’s Tower than at the World’s Fair.BY ORDER OFCrook County Committee.

DEVIL’S TOWER

ONE OF THEGREATEST NATURAL WONDERSof theUNITED STATES

Situated inCROOK COUNTY, WYOMING.

The Devil’s Tower is a perpendicular column of rock and no human being has ever stepped on its top.

On July 4th, 1893, Old Glory will be hung to the breeze from the top of the Tower, 800 feet from the ground by Wm. Rogers.

The committee and citizens of Crook County have organized the July 4th programme.

SPEAKERS:

Hon. N. K. Griggs.Beatrice, Neb.Col. Wm. R. Steele.Deadwood, So. Dak.Presentation of costume to Mr. Rogers by ladies of Deadwood, So. Dak.Presentation of Flag to be floated on the Tower by ladies of Spearfish, So. Dak.

Marshal of the Day:

E. B. Armstrong.Sheriff, Crook County

Aids to Marshal:

Chas. Williams,Hulett.Harry Stevens,Barrett.John Mahnken,Eothen.Ed. Ludlow,Beulah.Wm. H. Southerland,Riverdale.Emd Krouse,Inyan Kara.Mead Fish,Black Buttes.R. Williams,Williams Divide.E. L. Burke,Tower.Ed. Fitch,Gillette.Leroy Salisbury,Linden.Tom Nefsy,Linden.A. S. Bender,Alva.

THERE WILL BE PLENTYTOEATANDDRINKON THEGROUNDS.LOTS OF HAY AND GRAIN FOR HORSES.Dancing day and night.

Perfect order will be maintained. The rarest sight of a life time will be observed, and the 4th of July will be better spent at the Devil’s Tower than at the World’s Fair.

BY ORDER OFCrook County Committee.

Parachutist George Hopkins, top second from left, and Superintendent Newell F. Joyner are interviewed by a Denver radio announcer on October 6, 1941, after Hopkins was rescued from the top, where he had spent six days.

Jan Conn and Joan Showacre were members of the first all-woman party to climb the Tower, in 1952. Fritz Wiessner in 1937 and Jack Durrance in 1938 pioneered two of the first technical climbing routes. In 1948 Jan Conn climbed to the top with her husband, Herb.

When they reached the top, Rogers and Ripley strung up Old Glory from a flagpole they had somehow already managed to carry to the top! It was a spectacle in which many in the crowd below could claim a part. Muslin for the oversized flag apparently was purchased in Sundance, Wyoming, where it was painted and sewn together by a committee of boosters. Someone, it is said, had tailored a patriotic climbing suit of red, white, and blue that was presented to Rogers at ceremonies before the climb.

Ranchers who witnessed the event said that while Rogers may indeed have risked his neck on the Tower, he reaped an entrepreneurial bonanza afterwards. During the daylong merriment and the dancing that evening, his wife and his partner’s wife ran the only refreshment stand. The flag, which had blown down, was cut up and sold for souvenirs, and the ladies made a small fortune. Perhaps the boast of the handbill published that year by the Crook County Commissioners was true: It was possible to have a better time at Devils Tower that summer than in Chicago at the World’s Fair.

Rogers and Ripley raised a public spectacle perhaps not equalled until the caper of “Devils Tower George” Hopkins, the subject of a 1941 Tower-top rescue mission by alpinist Jack Durrance. Hopkins parachuted to the top and was stranded, keeping millions of newspaper readers in suspense over his fate atop the isolated rock monument few had ever seen. Durrance rescued his man five days later. Devils Tower again loomed in the national imagination, with the screening of the film “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.” And in 1979 a televised sports show featured George Willig, the “human fly,” whose climbing antics were beamed nationwide via space satellite. As we entered the decade of the 1980s the number of registered climbs of Devils Tower surpassed the 10,000 mark. But that’s jumping ahead too quickly in the chronology of this story.

At the turn of the century, the Tower became a natural meeting place for people who might see each other but once a summer at a Fourth of July celebration. Oldtimers recall that a small, rough-cutwooden platform served as a dance floor; the merry-go-round had seats for four children at most; and the home-grown orator read the Declaration of Independence. The affairs were fun and lasted for days. People camped at the Tower, and sometimes those who came across the river from the east were stranded by a quick summer flood.

In time, the harshness of the frontier softened a bit. Towns and cities replaced crude settlements and provided secure bases from which to look out at the wonders of the land. The newly arrived settlers made the West their own. And, to compress time and events into a few words, some people began to think about protecting some of the uniqueness of the West.

The National Park System owes its existence to this dawning of a conservation ethic in the late 19th century. Yellowstone, in northwestern Wyoming, became the first national park in 1872. A few other tracts were set aside as parks in subsequent years, but the preservation movement surged in 1906, when Congress passed the Antiquities Act. The President now had the authority to create national monuments. Not only scenery was to remain unspoiled in these monuments, but also priceless Indian ruins, pottery, and projectiles and other objects of antiquity were to be protected from looting collectors. President Theodore Roosevelt made conservation a national goal and used the Antiquities Act to proclaim the first eighteen national monuments. Devils Tower National Monument became the first, created on September 24, 1906, giving Wyoming both the first national park and the first national monument.

Light and shadows constantly play upon the Tower’s splintered, many-sided columns.

The next campaign was for money to build a bridge over the Belle Fourche River. By 1916, when the local families gathered at the Tower for another July Fourth picnic, it seemed that Congress would never appropriate money to turn the place into a proper public resort. A petition to Wyoming’s Congressman Frank W. Mondell complaining about washed out trails and difficult access to the Tower was circulated among the 1916 picnickers and may have done some good. The next year, the newly created National Park Service directed the building of an entrance road, soon to be improved again for auto traffic. By the end of the 1920s Wyoming’s participation in the national enthusiasm for highway construction was showing results. Old pathways followed by the Sioux, later broadened for buckboard wagon and stagecoach, were now graded and oiled for motorcars. A trip to the West was no longer an expedition of months: cross-country motoring had arrived.

An aerial view discloses the tear-drop shape of the top and the extent of the Great Plains around the Tower.

Through the Depression years from 1931 to 1941 the number of tourists, vacationers, and sightseers tripled at Devils Tower. And in the meantime, an army of unemployed laborers and artisans, organized as the Civilian Conservation Corps, applied themselves to public works projects throughout the country. At last the park received the attention its admirers said it deserved. CCC workers built new roads over an access bridge only a few years old. Overnight campgrounds were landscaped and picnic areas were provided with tables and benches. Formal walking trails were made for orderly hiking excursions around the base of the Tower. Water and electrical systems were installed, and in 1935 a museum was built out of rough-hewn logs. The museum, filled with exhibits, still stands at the foot of Tower Trail and serves as a summer visitor center, book sales outlet, and registration office for climbers.

Ask the average traveler to Devils Tower for his or her impressions and invariably two things come to mind, or, more properly, stand tall. One is the immutable, immobile Tower; the other is the animated, lively prairie dog. The national monument has become one of several reserves for this beleaguered plains inhabitant, whose communal lifestyle is profiled in Part 2 of this handbook. Like the Tower, it is misnamed, but so fixed is it in our minds and experience that it will likely always remain so. Subjected to eradication campaigns throughout the plains area because of conflicts with livestock enterprises, these otherwise personable rodents are protected here at Devils Tower National Monument.

The visitor conveniences that were so long in coming to Devils Tower are now enjoyed by nearly 300,000 persons every year. They come for mid-June’s display of wildflowers, or mid-September’s fall colors. They come to challenge themselves in the tradition of William Rogers and Willard Ripley. They come to watch the prairie dogs bustle about in near-parody of our own busyness. But most of all the Tower inspires a swing-by on the way east or west, prompting some travelers to tarry for a day or two on this pleasant plainsland.

By Greg Beaumont

The Belle Fourche River meanders through northeastern Wyoming, exposing red banks of clay. It crosses the southeastern corner of Devils Tower National Monument near the entrance road.

Pouring a mug of boiled coffee, I wait for the sun to make its appearance. The cup steams in the damp, cool morning air. Shivering, I press both hands to the heat the thick porcelain holds.

The sky begins to purple, and stars dim perceptibly. Through the campground cottonwoods, the immense, shadow-black bulk of the Tower materializes against the sky. It is possible now to discern the flight of bats overhead. But, in an instant, their swirling, night-long ballet vanishes with the darkness.

From my campsite along the Belle Fourche—this narrow, meandering river the French fur trappers named “the beautiful branch”—I listen to the first sounds of the day. Across the river a great horned owl protests the morning’s swift advance. Coming through the veil of river fog, its haunting, pervasivehoo-hoo-hoooois enough to freeze the blood of cottontails.

Even before the first hint of light, robins had begun to sing softly. In these unhurried morning songs they prove themselves thrushes. With the increasing light, the growing blend of wren, vireo, and thrasher music intensifies. These soft phrasings soon quicken into proclamations of territory, and meadowlarks, mourning doves, and yellowthroats compete across thicket, river, and meadow, their singing seemingly sharpened for distance and authority.

Nearby, a cottontail grazes on the dew-bent grass. It pauses occasionally, pointing its ears and working its nostrils in my direction. Three whitetail deer continue their cautious single-file approach, heading from the river bottom toward the higher ground of the prairie dog town. Crossing the campground, they repeatedly stop to inspect their surroundings. A log snaps and whistles in my fire, bringing their heads about in immediate, almost mechanical unison. Deliberately the lead animal lifts its tail to expose its white, silent signal of danger, and all three step smartly away as if in time to a fast metronome.

Direct sunlight spotlights the Tower. As though to challenge the sudden appearance of a gigantic, equally yellow competitor, a meadowlark takes wing, singing its loud, clear claim over the prairie dog town. Dawn is announced, the day begun.

The level rays of the sun accentuate the Tower’s vertical polygonal columns. The stark contrast of light and shadow imparted by the graceful taperingsof the soaring, many-sided columns give the Tower a man-made look. In this light it resembles the ruin of a stupendous ancient temple, not the casual result of some remote geological event.

Sipping the strong coffee, I wonder at the long procession of vanished Indian societies that camped and hunted here periodically through the centuries. These ancient peoples devised various stories to explain such an unusual landmark. And yet what science now says about the creation of Devils Tower would have seemed to those tribes as fantastic as their legends of a gargantuan bear gouging the rock seem to us today. Minor uncertainties remain, but geologists have pieced together a rough picture of the Tower’s probable origin. Some 60 million years ago, great Earth stresses began to deform the crust of the continent, resulting in the uplifting of the Rocky Mountains and Great Plains region. As the surface rock layers began to crumple and fault, magma from deep inside the Earth welled up into many of the resulting gaps and fissures. In many places on the continent, spectacular volcanoes formed, erupting with explosive force.

As the Rockies were being created, the climate of the continent’s interior began to change. The long reign of the dinosaurs that had presided over a stable, tropical landscape was coming to an end. The climate was gradually becoming cooler and drier. Doubtless the immense volumes of volcanic ash ejected into the atmosphere prevented a percentage of solar heat from reaching the Earth. Certainly the rise of the Rocky Mountains to the west influenced the old weather patterns. As the mountain blocks rose higher, they intercepted the warm, moist winds that blew inland from the Pacific. With the air masses rising ever higher, more and more of the moisture that had watered the extensive inland Cretaceous forests and swamplands was prevented from reaching what we know today as the Great Plains.

Steadily the forests retreated eastward as the “rain shadow” cast by the mountains extended eastward, shutting off the moist, warm Pacific winds. No longer moderated by these winds, the mid-continent was increasingly opened to seasonal invasions of northern arctic air. Newer ecosystems, such as deserts and grasslands, slowly evolved to replace the lush forests and swamps that had for so long sustained the dinosaurs.Just as drought, fire, and temperature extremes began to alter the old order in the plant kingdom, so did the more adaptable mammals and birds begin to replace reptiles as dominant animal forms.

Both the Kiowa and Cheyenne Indians held similar legends on the origin of the Tower. The story goes that tribal members were surprised by a gigantic bear, and their incantations caused a low, flat rock to rise, lifting them above the reach of the bear. The massive beast then gouged huge vertical marks into the rock as it attempted to reach the people. Finally, the Indians were able to kill the bear.

But not all the magma that welled upward during this restless period reached the Earth’s surface. Extensive masses were trapped far below the surface, where they gradually cooled and congealed. The Missouri Buttes and Devils Tower, however, are believed to be necks of extinct volcanoes. Geologic evidence indicates the Missouri Buttes formed first in two separate eruptions. The magma hardened, plugging the plumbing underneath. A third eruption to the southeast resulted in Devils Tower.

During the ensuing tens of millions of years, the gradual erosion of the overlying rock strata revealed these intruded plugs of volcanic rock. Since this dense, hard igneous rock resists erosion much better than the surrounding sedimentary rock, these formations will continue to stand out as features.

That ancient land of sedimentary rock through which the molten mass of Devils Tower penetrated may at one time have been as high as the golden eagle I now see drifting high above the Tower. Circling slowly in its morning hunt, the eagle spirals upward on the currents of warm air rising off the sun-heated rock. Perhaps it now soars at the elevation of the land long ago when the heavy, ringing-hard rock of Devils Tower oozed like paste far below the surface.

Today the top of the Tower is 386 meters (1,267 feet) above the Belle Fourche River. If that warm, Cretaceous landscape rested 600 meters (2,000 feet) above the present summit of the Tower, then more than 900 vertical meters (3,000 feet) of sedimentary rock has been pared away in the last 60 million years.

The relentless physical agents of erosion—running water, wind, and frost action—together with chemical breakdown of rock particles, continue to alter the landform. Given enough time, even the very hard rock of the Tower itself will waste away.

Sixty million years ago, when dinosaursTriceratopsandTyrannosaurus Rexduelled beside the lush river banks of the predecessor of the Belle Fourche, the ancestor of the golden eagle was flying overhead. Millions of years hence, a descendant of the eagle might soar above this same Wyoming landscape. Missing will be the unique shaft of fluted rock we call Devils Tower. And what of the men, who for a mere eyeblink of time, hunted in its shadow or came to wonder at its somber countenance in the morning sun?

About 60 million years ago, in early Tertiary times, a mass of molten magma forced its way upward through the relatively level layers of red, yellow, green, and gray Jurassic sedimentary rocks that make up northeastern Wyoming. The mass cooled into a hard, igneous rock called phonolite porphyry. An earlier flow of magma occurred about 6.5 kilometers (4 miles) to the northwest.As millions of years went by, the soft sedimentary rocks were eroded, exposing what eventually became known as Devils Tower and the Little Missouri Buttes. The erosion process continued, baring more and more of the dense, gray rock. Apparently, as the magma cooled, the rock contracted and fractured into columns of 4, 5, 6, or more sides. The larger columns are 2.5 meters (8 feet) in diameter at their base and taper to about 1.2 meters (4 feet) at the top.Today the Tower rises 264 meters (867 feet) from its base to an elevation of 1,560 meters (5,117 feet). The top is 386 meters (1,267 feet) above the Belle Fourche River at the entrance road. The tear-drop shaped top measures 91 meters (300 feet) from north to south and 55 meters (180 feet) from west to east. The sides rise almost vertically from the base for 12 to 30 meters (40 to 100 feet) to a narrow bench, from which they again rise steeply to the summit.

As millions of years went by, the soft sedimentary rocks were eroded, exposing what eventually became known as Devils Tower and the Little Missouri Buttes. The erosion process continued, baring more and more of the dense, gray rock. Apparently, as the magma cooled, the rock contracted and fractured into columns of 4, 5, 6, or more sides. The larger columns are 2.5 meters (8 feet) in diameter at their base and taper to about 1.2 meters (4 feet) at the top.

Today the Tower rises 264 meters (867 feet) from its base to an elevation of 1,560 meters (5,117 feet). The top is 386 meters (1,267 feet) above the Belle Fourche River at the entrance road. The tear-drop shaped top measures 91 meters (300 feet) from north to south and 55 meters (180 feet) from west to east. The sides rise almost vertically from the base for 12 to 30 meters (40 to 100 feet) to a narrow bench, from which they again rise steeply to the summit.

Athwackof an ax against wood puts an end to my daydreaming. My companion the cottontail hops for cover. The pair of magpies that have been feeding on the remains of a road-killed ground squirrel flash upward to safety. The gradual awakening of campground life inspires woodpeckers to hammer in the cottonwoods, and a yellow-breasted chat adds its odd jibber to the collected noise.

Gathering up knapsack and camera. I start my hike to the Tower. Already the sash of river fog has lifted and the air warmed to shirtsleeve comfort. From somewhere on the red cliffs that gown the Tower’s base, the faint singing of a rock wren beckons. Ahead lie 13 kilometers (8 miles) of trail, looping through a mosaic of sights, sounds, and smells of grassland, pine forest, woodland, and river.

Leaving the campground, I follow the trail that leads through the prairie dog town. The prairie dogs stand upright as I approach. The ones nearest the path begin their warning call, a monotonous “churk-churk-churk-churk.” The closer an intruder comes, the lower the animals sink into their holes, and the faster and shriller the chant becomes. Finally, with a last flick of its nervously twitching tail, each disappears into the safety of its burrow.

Prairie dogs, like the bison that once shared their vast range, are now reduced to remnant populations. Two hundred years ago, there were billions of prairie dogs on the shortgrass plains; these large ground squirrels had successfully adapted themselves to the harsh conditions. Perfect digging machines, they escape most predators and the extremes of the weather by spending more than half their lives underground.

The prairie dogs near the road do not even bother to sound a warning as I approach. They seem to be different creatures from the wild, suspicious animals farther from the road. Laconic and fat from handouts, more curious than cautious, they approach rather than retreat. These animals are easier targets for the redtail hawk that is screaming above the rivertimber, or the golden eagle that sails high overhead.

Across the road, the trail leaves the grassland of the prairie dogs and climbs steeply among ponderosa pines. Already the sun grows hot. At the edge of the forest, I stop to rest and survey the landscape before me. Spread out below, and now shimmering with sundance heat, the buff-colored dog town stands out in stark contrast with its darker, greener surroundings.

Although I sit only 30 meters (100 feet) or so above the dog town, I am struck by what my vantage point reveals: a clear patchwork of life communities. The loop of the Belle Fourche and the June-bright leaves of the deciduous trees lining its course provide a bright counterpart to the somber, pine-scattered ridge beyond. Just a short distance away the ponderosas appear more black than green. It was just such a quality that gave the distant, pine-covered mountain range to the east the nameBlackHills.

From where I sit, the lobe of the level bench of land that juts into the river looks as if it were graded and maintained by man, for its close-cropped vegetation contrasts greatly with the rugged ridge beyond. But this old floodplain was graded level by the river, and prairie dogs, not machines, clip the vegetation.

This small area of grassland, sandwiched between the base of the Tower and the encircling river, supports a surprising amount of life. Yet from all appearances, it would seem as if the multitude of prairie dogs would soon denude their patch of land and die of starvation. In contrast to the surrounding territory, the vegetation of the dog town appears exhausted.

Indeed, today’s empty plains give few hints of what a crowded stage the shortgrass plains once was. Before the coming of the white man, the grasslands teemed with bison, pronghorn, wapiti—named buffalo, antelope, and elk respectively by European settlers—and sprawling towns of prairie dogs. Astounded early observers, accustomed to the lush flora of the eastern woodlands, could not imagine how so many animals could survive in such a parched-looking land.

The secret is the grass itself. Whether tinder dry in midsummer or dead in winter, the grass blades remain highly nutritious. Grass plants can withstand repeated grazing and fires since new growth progresses from the stem joints rather than from the tips.

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Photographer Galen Rowell and writer Dennis Hanson decided to climb the Tower in October 1978 to find out for themselves what’s up there. After a strenuous five-hour climb, interrupted by occasional clouds of rock doves (below), they reached the top and found the surface is not as flat as it appears from down below or even from an airplane. Besides grasses, they found sagebrush, currant, and prickly pear cactus (below). As they were cooking dinner, a wood rat (below) joined them, nibbling at their food packets, peering into a pot, and nosing about their climbing gear. They also saw chipmunks and plenty of birds (See pages44-45,60-61), but, perhaps because of the coolness of October, they did not see any rattlesnakes, which others have found there sometimes. How did the animals get to the top? Some people have speculated that they were dropped by predatory birds, but that is questionable: they probably would have been killed by the birds’ talons or by the plunge to the surface. More than likely they just climbed up the Tower’s sides and took up residence. Many climbers, of the human sort, have reported seeing snakes and rodents working their way up fissures.What’s on top of the Tower? Most climbers report that the summit is similar to the surrounding landscape. Grasses cover much of the rocky surface, but better than that, a few snakes and mammals live there!Wood rat.Prickly pear cactus.Rock doves.

What’s on top of the Tower? Most climbers report that the summit is similar to the surrounding landscape. Grasses cover much of the rocky surface, but better than that, a few snakes and mammals live there!

Wood rat.

Prickly pear cactus.

Rock doves.

In addition, most plains animals contend with the semi-arid conditions of their environment by making efficient use of available moisture. Pronghorn, prairie dogs, and kangaroo rats, for example, need never take a drink since they obtain necessary water from the plants they eat. Such plant and animal adaptations explain why the shortgrass plains can sustain such a vast panorama of life.

From a tall pine upslope, a red squirrel chatters with indignation at discovering my intrusion into its domain. The bell-like song of a rock wren answers from an outcrop nearby. The small gray bird appears atop a boulder, motionless but for an instant, then hops down to resume its search for insects among the bright, arid cliffs it claims for its own.

I realize that I am seeing more than scenery here. All around me are boundaries—conspicuous where defined by plants, but invisible where respected by animals. No prairie dog has ever traveled across this slope, and no red squirrel has ever scurried into the treeless expanse of the prairie dog town. On no occasion would a rock wren enter the deep pine forest. Should its food supply somehow vanish, it would perish among the bare earth and gully washes of its own habitat rather than hunt the dog town or forest floor.

Each animal species is adapted to the conditions of its preferred environment. The prairie dog and red squirrel have similar roles in their respective habitats, as do the meadowlark in the grassland, the house wren in the deciduous woodlands, the rock wren on barren slopes, and the brilliant western tanager of the pine forests that is calling “pit-ik, pit-ik, pit-ik” from a branch overhead.

Whether herbivore, carnivore, scavenger, or decomposer, all of the countless, magnificently varied life-forms of each community share in the endless flow of chemical energy that originates with the touch of sun on chlorophyll. Eagle, prairie dog, bacterium, man—we all owe our lives, directly or indirectly, to the green leaf’s unique ability to convert light energy into chemical energy.

So does this colony of black ants foraging near my feet. Back and forth the living lines run, each individual obeying its ancient, perfected legacy of instinct. One carries aloft the bright green corpse of a lacewing. With a little last-minute help from fellowworkers, the ant carries its burden down into the nest hole. With its powerful jaws, another ant tugs the brittle remains of a once formidable foe—a jumping spider. So intent is the ant in its labor, it fails to avoid a deadly trap, however. In the soft ground along the margins of the trail is a craterfield of funnel-shaped pits. At the bottom of each, hidden just below the soil, waits quick death in the form of jaws even stronger than the ant’s. These insects, called antlions, are the larval stages of the equally voracious tiger-beetle.

Having tipped its load over the rim of the funnel, the ant disengages itself and attempts to crawl up the incline and get to the other side of the spider to pull it out again. But the loose soil particles offer little traction and the ant begins to slip. Frantic, it works its legs faster, making it slide downward more quickly. Alerted now by vibrations from the struggling insect, a hidden antlion waits its moment to strike. When the ant touches bottom, the hooked jaws appear, snapping once, twice, and finally closing shut about the thorax of its prey.

In a moment, all is over, the ant dragged beneath the soil at the bottom of the crater. The corpse of the spider, part way down the incline, is occasionally investigated by other passing ants. But the ants at the lip of the trap seem to sense the danger and leave the stranded prize alone. Other antlions, at the bottom of their expertly engineered traps, lie hidden from the passing parade of life above. Obeying their own instinct messages, they need only wait to survive.

A disturbance in the dog town starts the animals to barking and scurrying in every direction toward their burrows. Two figures from the campground have appeared up the incline. Their determined stride and the coils of rope at their shoulders suggest that the Tower’s summit may well be explored again today.

Already tall cumulus clouds, the beginnings of thunderheads, are building along the eastern horizon. A gust of hot air from the sun-baked ground below rushes into the pines, making the branches whizz into motion. A pine cone bounds against rock, setting the red squirrel to chattering again. I head for the Tower Trail, leaving behind the ant colony’s ordered turbulence and the view of the deserted dog town dancing in the sun.

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