Devils Tower, the legendary rock of Wyoming

Devils Tower is an imposing monolith that stands strong in the boundless scenery of Northwest Wyoming. It is a mountain with an unusual appearance, a geological formation 386 meters high. It reaches a total altitude of 1559 meters above sea level and consists of hundreds of basalt pillars of unknown origin, surrounded by countless legends. It was declared the 1st National Monument in the history of the United States of America in 1906 under President Theodore Roosevelt.



Around the tower, considered sacred by many Native American tribes, stands the national park by the same name. It is a beautiful area covered with great grassland, coniferous forests and woods inhabited by wild animals. It was given the name "Devil's Tower" in 1875 from an incorrect translation by Colonel Richard Irving Dodge who interpreted the original name of the natives "Mato Tipila", which meant “Tower of the Bear”, as "Tower of a Bad God". The walls of the rock have numerous grooves that according to a Dakota legend are the marks left by the claws of bears in an attempt to climb it to reach and devour some girls. The girls asked the Great Spirit for help to bring them to safety and the divinity made the mountain grow up to the sky, turning them into stars.



The Tower was first climbed on July 4, 1893 by William Rogers, a local cattleman who reached the top with a rather very simple ladder that reached 105 meters high, but in 1937 the first real technical climbs began. Today the site is besieged by professional climbers who love to challenge themselves with this almost vertical wall all year round, except for the month of June, when the monolith is reserved for the sacred rituals of the indigenous tribes. This mysterious basaltic bastion, which some geologists attribute to a formation of volcanic origin, also fascinated the great director Steven Spielberg, so much so that it was used as the place of alien encounters in the 1977 science fiction film "Close Encounters of the Third Kind".

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