40 Fun Facts About Devils Tower

Which science-fiction film made Devils Tower famous as the landing site of an alien mothership?

Close Encounters of the Third Kind filmed on location at the rock in 1976, and so many fans came afterwards that visits to the monument jumped.

Which US president made Devils Tower the country's first national monument with a proclamation in 1906?

Theodore Roosevelt signed the proclamation only three months after Congress gave presidents the power to protect landmarks of scientific interest.

How did stuntman George Hopkins reach the summit of Devils Tower in 1941, before getting stranded there for six days?

By parachute, as a publicity stunt: he landed on target, but the rope dropped for his descent fell out of reach and climbers had to fetch him.

In a famous 1977 film scene, what food does Roy Neary absentmindedly shape into Devils Tower at dinner?

Mashed potatoes become an early model of the rock that haunts his visions, before he hauls dirt and bricks indoors to build a huge one.

The summit of Devils Tower covers about one and a half acres, roughly the size of which playing area?

A football field is the rangers' own comparison for the 180-by-300-foot top, a rocky dome where grasses and cactus grow.

In several Native American traditions, what are the long vertical grooves on the sides of Devils Tower said to be?

Claw marks is the answer in Kiowa and Crow accounts alike: the rock rose to lift children out of reach, and the animals chasing them raked its sides.

Which piece of punctuation is officially left out of the name Devils Tower on maps and signs?

An apostrophe was there when an 1875 Army expedition coined Devil's Tower, but the US naming standard for places drops the possessive.

What did ranchers William Rogers and Willard Ripley build in 1893 to make the first recorded climb of Devils Tower?

A wooden ladder of pegs hammered into one long crack carried them 350 feet up, and part of it, restored in 1972, still clings to the rock.

Devils Tower rises above the plains in the northeastern corner of which US state?

Wyoming keeps the rock in its far northeast, where it stands 1,267 feet above the valley below and shows up from the highway outside the park.

In one Kiowa telling, seven girls lifted into the sky from Devils Tower became which cluster of stars?

The Pleiades pass right over the rock on winter nights, as a Kiowa soldier at Fort Sill pointed out when he told the story in 1897.

The Lakota call Devils Tower Mato Tipila, a name that translates into English as what?

Bear Lodge was the label on the earliest official maps, and in 2014 a Lakota spiritual leader asked the federal names board to bring it back.

Which director filmed scenes for his 1977 alien-contact blockbuster on location at Devils Tower?

Steven Spielberg could film at the rock for only a few hours each evening, because his scenes there needed the brief light of dusk.

During which month are climbers asked to stay off Devils Tower voluntarily, out of respect for tribal ceremonies?

June is when many tribal ceremonies take place, and the voluntary closure, a compromise written into a 1995 plan, cuts the number of climbs sharply.

Devils Tower formed underground; which natural process later brought it into view over millions of years?

Erosion did it: the molten rock cooled underground about 50 million years ago, and water later carried off the softer rock around it.

Cooling molten rock, as at Devils Tower, typically cracks into columns of which shape when seen end-on?

Hexagons are the classic pattern, though the huge columns here are less regular, and many have five sides instead of six.

Devils Tower was America's first national monument; which first national park lies in the same state?

Yellowstone was protected in 1872, a generation earlier, and the first outsiders known to see the rock were an 1859 expedition heading there.

Which famous coastal landmark is built from the same sort of naturally cracked rock columns as Devils Tower?

Giant's Causeway in Northern Ireland has some 40,000 such columns, but none match the ones here, which rangers call the largest in the world.

Which burrowing animals fill a 40-acre colony of about 600 residents beside the road into Devils Tower?

Prairie dogs clip the plants in their town down to a few inches, so that nothing can creep up on them unseen.

On which holiday in 1893 did rancher William Rogers climb Devils Tower in front of a large crowd of spectators?

Fourth of July handbills promised a day better spent at the rock than at the World's Fair, and some families rode three days by wagon to watch.

Devils Tower stands at the northwestern edge of which mountain region, better known for Mount Rushmore?

Black Hills uplift some 50 to 60 million years ago came as molten rock welled up here, and a 500-mile band of red cliffs still circles the whole region.

What did ranchers planning the first climb of Devils Tower try to fly over the summit to carry up a rope?

A kite got stuck in a crack instead, and while tugging it free the men saw that the crack seemed to run from base to top: their route.

Dressed as which patriotic figure did rancher William Rogers make his public climb of Devils Tower in 1893?

Uncle Sam was his outfit, and by noon he stood on the summit with an American flag snapping in the stiff wind.

Which company offered one of its aircraft to rescue George Hopkins from the top of Devils Tower in 1941?

Goodyear offered a blimp and the Navy a helicopter, but in the end eight climbers simply went up the rock and brought him back.

Which actor played Roy Neary, the lineman haunted by visions of Devils Tower in a 1977 alien film?

Richard Dreyfuss played the obsessed lineman in the same year he made The Goodbye Girl, the comedy that won him the Oscar for best actor.

In a 1977 alien film, which fake disaster does the Army announce to clear people from around Devils Tower?

A nerve gas spill from a train wreck is the cover story, planted in the news so the military can prepare a secret landing site.

After reaching the top of Devils Tower in 1893, Willard Ripley said he found only a little soil and what?

Sagebrush and soil made a flat report from the first person on record to stand up there, a feat many had thought impossible.

The rock of Devils Tower takes the first part of its geological name from which unusual property?

It rings when hit: a small slab gives a clear metallic note, and the name comes from the Greek for sounding stone.

Which 1906 law, signed months before Devils Tower was protected, lets presidents proclaim national monuments?

Antiquities Act powers were written with ancient ruins in mind, yet their first use went to a rock, protected for its scientific value.

Some climbing routes on Devils Tower are shut each spring to protect the cliff nests of which birds?

Falcons nest on the columns every spring, so rangers shut the nearby routes until the chicks have fledged.

During which part of an outing on Devils Tower have most climbing accidents and deaths happened?

The rappel is the dangerous part, when climbers must thread their ropes through fixed anchors three or four times to reach the ground.

Which element, oxidized in the Spearfish Formation, gives the cliffs below Devils Tower their deep red color?

Iron minerals in the sand and silt of a shallow Triassic sea rusted, leaving the oldest rocks visible in the monument a deep maroon.

Which river, a tributary of the Cheyenne, winds past the foot of Devils Tower and carries away its debris?

Belle Fourche, French for beautiful fork, is the stream that hauls off the rubble as rain and snow wear away the softer rock around the base.

The Circle of Sacred Smoke sculpture near Devils Tower represents the first puff from which object?

A newly lit pipe inspired the circle, a gift from Japanese sculptor Junkyu Muto, who placed it so that the rock appears framed inside it.

In a Lakota story, a warrior praying at Devils Tower is carried to the summit; which object stays there?

A buffalo skull he had brought to worship with stayed behind, and Short Bull, who told the story in 1932, said it could still be seen up there.

Which New Deal work program helped complete the log visitor center at Devils Tower in 1935?

Civilian Conservation Corps crews came after the monument's custodian lobbied for a camp, and their building is now a listed historic place.

Which climber, who pioneered the most popular route up Devils Tower in 1938, led the rescue of George Hopkins?

Jack Durrance, held up by bad weather, had to travel by train, then led the party that reached the stranded stuntman and got him safely to the ground.

Which climber raced up Devils Tower in just 18 minutes in the 1980s, alone and without ropes?

Todd Skinner free-soloed the Walt Bailey route in that time, while most roped pairs need four to six hours on the most popular line.

Which Pulitzer-winning Kiowa author was taken to Devils Tower as a baby and named Rock-Tree Boy?

N. Scott Momaday won the 1969 Pulitzer for House Made of Dawn and later wove the rock's origin story into his novel The Ancient Child.

Which German-born mountaineer led the first free climb of Devils Tower in 1937, using a single piton?

Fritz Wiessner later judged even that one piton unnecessary, and two years on he came within 800 feet of the top of K2.

Which cluster of peaks a few miles northwest of Devils Tower is made of the same columnar igneous rock?

Missouri Buttes are four summits that cooled underground from the same sort of molten rock, but they stand on private land with no public access.