A geologic feature protrudes out of the rolling prairie that surrounds the Black Hills. The site is considered Sacred to the Lakota and other tribes that have a connection to the area. Hundreds of parallel cracks make it one of the finest traditional crack climbing areas in North America.
The 1977 movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind used the formation as a plot element and as the location of its climactic scenes.[18][19] Its release was the cause of a large increase in visitors to the monument.
In the first use of the Antiquities Act, President Theodore Roosevelt designated Devils Tower a national monument 9/24/1906. The Tower rises 867 feet from its base and 1267 feet above the red banks of the Belle Fourche River.
According to the Native American tribes of the Kiowa and Lakota Sioux, some girls went out to play and were spotted by several giant bears, who began to chase them. In an effort to escape 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 the sides of Devils Tower.) When the girls reached the sky, they were turned into the star constellation the Pleiades.
There are five different species of prairie dogs, but only the black-tailed prairie dog inhabits Devils Tower National Monument. Click for a video of the Devils Tower Prairie Dogs
During our stay at the Devils Tower KOA we visited with several of the German tourists traveling the USA for 30 days in the Rotel...next stop for them Yellowstone.
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