There is an old Kiowa legend about seven little girls, some bears and a giant rock that grew from the Earth. Seems the girls were playing at a good distance from their camp one day when they came across a group of bears, and the bears (being bears) gave chase, presumably seeing the girls run and thinking they were prey.
In case you didn't know, you are not supposed to run from bears.
Now it may come as no surprise to you but bears can run faster than little girls. And seeing their pursuers gaining, the girls climbed onto a low rock and prayed to the rock to save them. It did (these sorts of things tend to happen in legends). The rock started growing right as the girls stood upon it and raised them high above the Earth and saved them from the bears, with the animals clawing and scratching uselessly as the rock rose from the ground.
The girls never went home. Their families looked for them and found only broken bear claws turned to stone where the rock had grown and bore them out of danger. The bears never got to the girls either. Instead of going home or being eaten, the girls fled to the night sky. They can still be seen today in what we now call the Pleiades, seven stars that make up part of the constellation of Taurus.
The rock that saved them is still out there too, complete with deep vertical claw marks made by those bears all those years ago. The rock today is known as Devils Tower and it sits on about the most northern part of the United States that the Kiowa ever lived. Today it's in Wyoming, and within easy driving distance of Rapid City, SD, where we made camp for the Memorial Day weekend this year. I'm not spending a long weekend in Rapid City and not driving 90 miles or so to go see Devils Tower.
You think that story is farfetched? Maybe. Maybe that's why it's a legend. But do you know it's not true? You never know what actually happened in the past.
Truth be told, I've had Devils Tower on my list for years. I considered it as a stop on my cross-country drive in 2011 that on some level was the origin of this blog. But in that year, it was either Devils Tower or the Battle of Little Bighorn. We opted for the Little Bighorn to pick up Montana and see the spot where George Armstrong Custer (one of my most reviled historical figures) met his end. Devils Tower would have to wait. It's been worked into various trip itineraries since that year but it was just too far away to hit on our Yellowstone 2020 trip (Wyoming is a big state). As I've already stated, no way could I be in Rapid City for four days and not drive to Devils Tower.
It may come as no surprise for you to learn that scientists today have another explanation for the Tower's formation other than the prayers of some little girls. It may also come as no surprise for you to learn that volcanic action may have been involved. While there is some debate about the exact cause, the data suggests that the Tower's volume was established by some underground (at that time) volcanic eruption that caused a mass of rock to form within and below a softer layer of the Earth's surface. Over the centuries and millennia, the soft stuff eroded away and eventually got to such a level where the Tower became visible.
I know what you are thinking...how do the scientists explain the giant bear claw marks along the shaft of the Tower? Good question. Apparently when the mass of volcanic rock cooled, it contracted and started to fracture. The fracture lines were remarkably geometric, cracking the cooling lava into a series of hexagonal shaped mini-shafts, sort of like a stack of giant pencils grouped together. The bear claws at the base of the Tower are pieces of these giant pencils that have snapped off over the millions of years that the Tower has been visible.
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| Some of the "bears' claws" that fell off the Tower over the centuries. See below for a scale figure. |
This is not, by the way, the first time we've encountered a geological phenomenon like this. There is a part of Yellowstone National Park that has a formation like this and we walked all over a series of hexagonal-shaped rock stones at Giant's Causeway in Northern Ireland in 2019. The stones at Giant's Causeway were maybe two feet or a bit less to a side. Devil's Tower's hexagons are a bit bigger. OK...so a lot bigger. We'll get to that.
As a National Park property (Devils Tower was the first National Monument in 1906 and is still in that status), the focus for us was all on the Tower. There's no practical way to climb this thing without some pretty advanced climbing equipment and presumably some training, so we were left to walk around and near the Monument itself. There is an awesome, 1.3 mile long paved trail (the Tower Trail, if you must know) that comprehensively and uncomplicatingly (yes, I made that word up) leads you around the entirety of the Tower. It's not too steep and it's well shaded. There are longer trails at the park itself but this one seemed perfect for us.
The trail takes you through a Ponderosa pine forest which is just incredible. The way the path winds through the forest gives you an ever-changing view of the Tower itself while also at spots giving you amazing vistas over the forest and plains around the park. There's nothing fancy here. It's a walk around a giant rock, but the rock is a pretty amazing one and there are definitely notable stops along the way.
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| Some of these rocks around the Tower are pretty sizeable. |
Perhaps one of the more astonishing places to stop is a side trail that points you to some old wooden ladders towards the top of the Tower. We were not actually able to spot the ladders from the ground through the custom built viewing tubes (for lack of a better word) due to poor eyesight (seriously, we just couldn't see...come try my glasses on sometime if you doubt me) but apparently climbing Devils Tower was an actual thing at one time. Like for actual regular people who needed no greater qualifications that climbing a ladder.
We did, by the way, see some 21st century people climbing Devils Tower. I've had notions at times (like maybe a decade or so ago) about climbing a mountain. Looking into what it would take to climb Mount Rainier before deciding it was likely too much for me was about as far as I took this idea. But there is no way I'd do what these people on the side of Devils Tower were doing. There is seemingly no way up the rock faces of that Tower and these people are out there with some ropes and some helmets. I'm sure it's less complicated than my worst fears but it's not for me. No way. I've walked to Machu Picchu and felt incredible about it, but climbing Devils Tower ain't my thing. Not ever.
The figures in the photograph below do, if nothing else, show the size of the hexagonal extrusions that make up the Tower. These "pencils" are way bigger than the ones we walked over at Giant's Causeway.
Have you been reading this post wondering why it's called Devils Tower? We did when we arrived there and started driving through the actual park. Seems that if you are there at sunset the actual Tower sometimes seems to glow an orange color and I guess someone, somehow associated this glow with Satan. Why, I have no idea, but that's the reality of the name, I guess. It's because of the color.
Devils Tower as a place to visit is not complicated. But it certainly is impactful and I believe that there is great value in going to places like this so you can see for yourself what it's like there. This is, in fact, one of the cornerstones of my philosophy about travel itself. As much as you can read about places and see photographs or movies or videos and talk to other people who have been there, there is absolutely no substitute for actually being there yourself.
If you had asked me to relate the character of Devils Tower at this time last year, I likely would have described it as an orange-red rock in the middle of some barren deserted landscape. It's clearly not. I guess I could have learned some or all of that by studying pictures and reading descriptions online but there's nothing like going somewhere to really learn about somewhere. Devil's Tower is not orange-red; based on our visit it's green, flecked by lichen growing on the rocks. You can see the lichen on some of the fallen "bears' claws" scattered around the Tower.
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| The lichen on the rocks makes Devils Tower look green. |
The land around Devils Tower is also anything but barren. That's maybe pretty obvious from the pictures added to this post. The Tower sits within the forest around it. The rock does not sit clear of the pines that cover the land on all sides. Instead it is viewed between the pines as you walk around it. It's also not on a flat plain; it's actually on a ridge in the land, so when you drive up to the Tower, you drive onto a plinth on which it sits.
The thing is also absolutely enormous. We first caught sight of the Tower when our navigation app read 17 miles to the Visitor Center and I suspect we could have seen it from a lot further away if the contours of the land we were driving on didn't obscure the Tower from view.
I'm not sure if I'm ever going to be back near Devils Tower again. This is likely my one and only visit. I can't imagine spending much more time in southwest South Dakota and southeast Wyoming in my life because it's just too remote and inconvenient to get to, and there are way, way more places above it on the list. I am, however, fairly sure that this won't be the last time I'll ever see these hexagonal rock formations in nature. After all, we still need to make the trip to the other end of the Giant's Causeway at some point in the future.
How We Did It
Devils Tower National Monument is open 24 hours per day every day of the year. Pretty simple opening hours there. We timed our visit to coincide with the opening of the Visitor Center at 9 a.m. and to beat the rush that we perceived might be hiking the Tower Trail. I don't think we needed to do either.
Sometimes Visitor Centers at National Parks add a ton of value. I felt this way pretty strongly about places like Little Rock Central High School National Historic Site. I didn't feel that way about Devils Tower. I'm not saying skip it, but if you wanted to get there earlier than the Visitor Center opened, I don't think it would affect your experience there.
We also didn't think it was that crowded. Most of the time we spent on the Trail we found ourselves alone or a good distance from any other people. Sure, it was a weekday and was not yet Memorial Day (although it was the Friday before that holiday) but we were surprised by the lack of people at the site.
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