The myth of Devil’s Tower

Many Native American cultures have myths surrounding the tower’s creation, including the Kiowa of the western Great Plains. According to the Kiowa, the great rock formed of a tree trunk which grew to lift seven sisters into the sky to save them from an attacking bear. However, instead of returning to their village, the girls ascend to the sky as stars, transforming into the Pleiades, or “Seven Sisters,” star cluster- which, if you choose to visit Devils Tower at night, are clearly visible right above the monument during the fall.

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 the apostrophe is omitted.

Devils Tower (also known as Bear Lodge Butte) 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 386m above the Belle Fourche River, standing 264m from summit to base. The summit is 1,558m above sea level.

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 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 timeline, the Rocky Mountains and the Black Hills were uplifted. Magma rose through the crust, intruding into the existing sedimentary rock layers.