Sacred Place: Devil's Tower, Crook County, Wyoming
The singular, scarred rock butte in the Bear Lodge Mountains of Crooke County, Wyoming holds the distinction of being the first National Monument, declared by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1906. It is composed of igneous or volcanic rock and rises almost straight up from the surrounding plains and the Belle Fourche River, for a height of 867 feet. Thousands of visitors flock to see it each year, some attempting the climb with equipment. In 1875, Col. Richard Irving Dodge saw the butte and asked local Natives what it was called. An interpreter told him that it was called Bad God's Mountain. English-speakers quickly rechristened it Devil's Tower and the name stuck. Actually, the Tower is associated with legends of the Lakota, Kiowa, Crow and Cheyenne people, who have their own names for it. It is Bear's House, Bear's Lodge or Bear's Lair to the Cheyenne, Lakota and Crow. The Kiowa know it as Aloft on a Rock or Tree Rock. Local Nati...