Chipmunks, mice, pack rats, and the occasional snake are native to the summit. The terrain at the top is rocky, with native grasses, cactus, and sagebrush. Its summit, slightly dome shaped, is about one-and-a-half acres or the size of a football field. The Tower’s base circumference is one mile.
The formation has a base diameter of 1,000 feet and rises 867 feet from its base 1,267 feet above the Belle Forche River and 5,112 feet above sea level. Devils Tower played a key role as a mashed-potato sculpture in the alien thriller Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977).ĭevils Tower, a remarkable mass of protruding molten rock, lies in the Black Hills of northeastern Wyoming. Still, one of the unusual credits to the monument’s renown rests in film history. And as many as 6,000 climbers worldwide arrive at the Tower each year to scale its walls. Native American tribes continue to share a reverence for the monument through their sacred narratives and folklore. In some directions, the Tower is visible by vehicle for nearly 50 miles some say even farther. Foremost, it is America’s first declared national monument. Devils Tower National Monument in red state Wyoming holds numerous distinctions.
