Devils Tower – Stories and Legends

The famous movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind features the Devils Tower. It’s impossible not to recognize it.

It became famous when Richard Dreyfuss began having visions of the Devils Tower with its flat top and ridged sides. Soon after having the visions he constructs a crew sculpture in his mashed potatoes. This alarms his family. He becomes more and more obsessed with the mountain. First he makes paintings of it, then he goes off the deep end. When he brings in piles of dirt from the yard to create a scale replica in his living room, his wife and kids leave him. It’s a very famous scene in the movie.

Eventually Richard’s character travels to Wyoming to see the real Devils Tower. Despite warnings from the military to stay away, he sneaks up to the mountain. What he finds is incredible. People use a big organ to communicate with aliens, who eventually land. People who have been lost for years, not aged a day, come out of the huge ship. Richard decides to enter the ship to learn from the aliens. Given the way Hollywood makes sequels, it’s surprising this open ending didn’t spawn a second movie. It still might. Later versions shown on television and released on DVD included scenes inside the ship. They didn’t add much to the movie.

Now on to the real Devils Tower. It’s home is Wyoming. It’s a volcano neck. This is also known as a lava neck. It’s a result of magma flowing out of a volcano’s vent. It’s generally the sign of an active volcano. It’s not certain that this formation is such a plug.

The Indians have a legend about how Devils Tower Wyoming was formed. Some Indian sisters were walking in the wilderness, picking flowers, when they came upon some bears. The bears chased them. The Great Spirit helped the girls by raising up the land upon which they stood. The Bears would not give up. Every time they made it nearly to the top, they slid back to the bottom. Their claws left ridges in the sides of the mountain.

Another legend, this one told by the Sioux Indians, was of two boys wandering far from their village. A great bear named Mato found them. It had claws the size of tepees, and it wanted to eat the boys for breakfast. They asked the creator to offer some help. He did, raising the ground beneath them. Just as with the stories involving the girls, and this one the giant bear tried to get at them from all sides but could not. Its huge claw marks remain.

The Devils Tower is as interesting as the stories that surround it.