Devils Tower National Monument
| Devils Tower National Monument | |||
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| Location: | Wyoming , United States | ||
| Next city: | Sundance , Wyoming | ||
| Surface: | 5.5 km² | ||
| Founding: | September 24, 1906 | ||
| Visitors: | 395,203 (2011) | ||
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The Devils Tower ( German "Teufelsturm" ) is a tower-like hardening of magmatic origin on the northwestern edge of the Bear Lodge Mountains (northwestern Black Hills Uplift ) in Crook County in the northeast of the US state Wyoming . It rises about 265 meters above its immediate surroundings and has a diameter of almost 150 meters. The rock is considered the abode of the grizzly bear by several prairie Indian peoples and is a sacred place for them .
The area was designated by President Theodore Roosevelt on September 24, 1906 under the then new Antiquities Act as the first national monument under the name Devils Tower National Monument . It is maintained by the National Park Service .
geology
Below: Outcrop of the Spearfish Formation with the base of the Gypsum Springs Formation on top of the northern bank of the Belle Fourche River (see white frame in the picture above for position).
The Devils Tower protrudes from a high level of Mesozoic sedimentary rocks apparent in the next clay and silt the triad (Spearfish formation), especially gypsum rich layers of the central Jura (Gypsum-Springs formation) as well as predominantly clay, silt and sand stones of the later Jurassic (Sundance Formation, Morrison Formation ) and the early Cretaceous (Inyan Group, Skull Creek Shale, Newcastle Sandstone, Mowry Shale).
The Devils Tower itself consists entirely of the alkaline volcanic rock phonolite ("Phonolith porphyry ", in older literature trachyte ). It is significantly younger than the surrounding sedimentary rock and was formed around 50 million years ago in the Eocene , during the Lara mountain formation , as a result of the plate tectonic processes in western North America: The pressure exerted on the western edge of the North American platform led to the dome-like elevation of the Precambrian and Paleozoic rocks of the Black Hills from underground. The uplift was accompanied by alkaline magmatism, which is restricted to the northern part of the Black Hills uplift and is believed to be related to the reactivation of a deep fault in the Precambrian basement (the northwest extension of the Sage Creek fault), which is known as Ascent track for, among other things, the magma from which the Devils Tower emerged.
After this magma made room in the Mesozoic sediments and stayed there, it cooled and solidified into rock. Due to the decrease in volume during the solidification process, a very regular pattern of shrinkage fissures formed, which divided the rock into columns ( lava columns ). These pillars are predominantly hexagonal in cross section. But there are also pillars with pentagonal and square cross-sections. It is unclear whether part of this magma ever reached the surface of the earth or how close it came to it. Therefore it cannot be answered whether the Devils Tower is a "neck", i.e. a plug in the chimney of a volcano, or whether there is a laccolith that solidified at a greater distance from the earth's surface. The fact that there are no traces of aboveground volcanism in the vast area speaks in favor of the laccolith hypothesis. Volcanic ashes as well as lava flows and other indications could simply no longer be present today due to erosion in the meantime . About five kilometers northwest of the tower are the Missouri Buttes , a group of much smaller volcanic hardlings made of trachyte and phonolite, which are around 50 million years old and similar to the Devils Tower. Both the Missouri Buttes and the Devils Tower, however, are tiny in terms of their footprint compared to the volcanic complexes in the Bear Lodge Mountains and the actual Black Hills further to the southeast.
In the further course of the Cenozoic Era , large areas of Palaeogenic and Late Cretaceous sediments were removed from the Black Hills region (denudation). Since the Devils Tower consists of significantly more erosion-resistant rock than the surrounding and presumably originally covering layers, it was dissected out of the environment and shaped to its current shape. Today it towers over its immediate surroundings by around 265 m and the bed of the Belle Fourche River by around 385 m. Its highest point is 1559 m above sea level. The stump is surrounded by rubble heaps consisting of fragments of phonolite and brecciated surrounding rock .
landscape
The plateau overlooked by the Devils Tower is largely covered with a forest, which consists mainly of yellow pines . Originally the region was loosely wooded. Due to the suppression of forest fires for decades , the forests are now unnaturally dense. The National Park Service has deliberately started small fires in the reserve at appropriate times since the 1990s to rejuvenate and open up the forests.
Indian myths
The striking shape of the mountain makes the Devils Tower an object of Indian mythology . Under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) of 1990, all peoples who had ever had any connection with the northeast Wyoming region were asked whether their lore included the Devils Tower. In the study published in 1993, 21 peoples reported having cultural ties to the mountain.
The Kiowa - Indians (Engl. Call the Devils Tower "Tso-aa" Tree Skirt Tree Rock, dt, probably because he rises like a tree.). According to their legend , the mountain was formed when their ancestors established a village in this area. One day seven little Indian girls were playing some distance from the village. They were spotted by several bears and the girls rushed to the village. The bears, however, reached the girls well before the village. In their distress, the girls climbed a small boulder. They implored the stone: "Rock, have pity on us, rock save us" . The rock heard the girls and began to grow in height. The bears jumped on the rock in their anger, broke huge boulders out of it and scratched deep grooves and crevices in the rock with their claws, but they could not reach the girls. The rock grew and grew into the sky. The girls are still in heaven as seven little stars in the sky: the Pleiades .
The Lakota and Dakota Indians from the Sioux family associate the Devils Tower with White Buffalo Woman . She is said to have given them the Holy Pipe and the Seven Rites of the Nations in this place . The pipe is said to be in a secret cave on the south side of the mountain to this day.
For the Cheyenne , the Devils Tower is the place where their legendary hero Sweet Medizine deposited the four sacred arrows in a secret cave on the north side of the mountain. He also died on the mountain, which is why the Cheyenne honor him here in ceremonies.
history
Various Sioux peoples, the Cheyenne, Kiowas, Crow , Arapaho , Blackfoot and others used the northern prairies as hunting grounds. With the advancement of the whites to the west, more and more Indians who had formerly settled further east were pushed into the Great Plains under the Rocky Mountains.
Fur hunters were active in the area from the 1830s, but there are no records describing Devils Tower. Expeditions to the Black Hills in 1855 and 1857 were unlikely to come within sight of the mountain, although a chronicler recorded in 1857 that he had seen Bear Lodge and Little Missouri Buttes Mountains through binoculars . He was probably referring to a range of hills north of the tower.
In 1859 two members of Capt. WF Raynolds made a detour to the Devils Tower in the Yellowstone area and were the first whites to see him demonstrably. A surveying expedition made detailed records in the summer of 1875:
“Its [ie the tower] remarkable structure, its symmetry and its exposed position make it an inexhaustible source of amazement. [...] It is a large, remarkable obelisk made of trachyte with a column structure that gives it a longitudinally grooved appearance, and it rises 190 meters almost vertically from the base. Its summit is so completely inaccessible that an energetic explorer, for whom climbing a normal mountain is a pleasant pastime when standing at its base, can only look up with no hope of ever setting foot on it. "
Colonel Richard I. Dodge, commander of the expedition's military escort, was the first to name the mountain Devils Tower in his book on the Black Hills in 1876. In his official report in 1880, Newton explained the naming with the fact that although the Indian name Mateo Tepee as Bear Lodge was on the old maps, bad god's tower (Tower of Evil God) was the common translation for the expression of the Indians in the region. Devils Tower was chosen as the more elegant translation. Today this is considered a mistranslation.
In the Treaty of Fort Laramie 1868 , the region was awarded to the Lakota . George Armstrong Custer broke the treaty when he explored the Black Hills with a military expedition in 1874 and found gold . The reports attracted settlers and prospectors who settled illegally. In 1875 the army gave up trying to hold back the invaders. The Indians defended their hunting ground and the following year began one of the last great battles of the Indian Wars , which in June 1876 led to the Battle of Little Bighorn , about 250 km northwest of Devils Tower, with the defeat and death of Custer. Despite this victory, the Lakota Sioux, Cheyenne and Arapaho were forcibly driven into reservations in the fall of the same year .
From 1880 the area was officially opened to settlers, the little gold rush was already over. There were first plans to use the mountain as a quarry , after which a conservation area was considered. In 1891 the Devils Tower was temporarily secured as part of a forest reserve, but the reserve was reduced in size under the pressure of the settlement and in 1898 it was completely abolished. That same year, Senator Francis E. Warren tabled a bill to create a Devils Tower National Park . The plan was referred to the committees and not pursued further.
In 1906 the Antiquities Act came into force, according to which the US President has the right to protect objects of scientific importance in federal ownership as national monuments without the approval of Congress . President Theodore Roosevelt was convinced that the Devils Tower had to be preserved, and in September 1906 he used his new competence for the first time with the protection of the mountain.
During the Great Depression , the Civilian Conservation Corps built the cul-de-sac and the first visitor center and other facilities from 1935 to 1938. The Devils Tower became easier to reach and better known.
On October 1, 1941, stuntman George Hopkins parachuted off an airplane without registration or permission and landed on the mountain. Some of his equipment was lost on landing, the rope he needed for the descent fell off the side of the mountain and was out of reach for him. A team of climbers led by Jack Durrance, who first climbed the route named after him in 1938 (see below), came from the west coast to Devils Tower and brought Hopkins down on October 7th. This had meanwhile been supplied with food and blankets thrown from planes. The rescue operation was a national media spectacle.
At the beginning of the 1960s, the monument was expanded to what it is essentially today. As part of Mission 66 , in preparation for the 50th anniversary of the National Park Service, a campsite was created in the bend of the Belle Fourche River, along with hiking trails and information boards.
Ascents
The first known ascent to the tower took place in 1893, but not in conventional climbing. William Rogers and Willard Ripley, ranchers from the neighborhood, spent days building a ladder out of stakes, which they knocked into a continuous crack and connected with willow poles. On the occasion of a celebration of Independence Day on July 4, 1893, Rogers and a large number of neighbors, including women, climbed the mountain via the ladder. The ladder remained functional until 1927, weathered remains can still be seen today.
In 1937 three climbers from the American Alpine Club , Fritz Wiessner with William P. House and Lawrence Coveney, were the first to reach the summit using modern climbing technology. Wiessner led through the entire route in free climbing and only hit a single hook, which he later regretted - he said it would have been superfluous. A year later, in September 1938, the second ascent of the tower by Jack Durrance and Harrison Butterworth took place. The Durrance route is a few dozen meters to the left of the Wiessner route, is about the same difficulty (according to the American difficulty scale 5.7) and is the most popular today, but not to be underestimated. American climbers describe them as undervalued. In the meantime, almost all the cracks between the phonolite columns have increased.
The National Monument today
The sanctuary's visitor center at the end of the cul-de-sac shows exhibits on geology, natural history and the culture of the region's prairie Indians. In addition, regular guided hikes take place from here and rangers give short lectures about the area.
In addition to hiking on the circular path at the foot of the tower and other trails in the area, free climbing at the Devils Tower is a popular use of the reserve.
In order to reduce conflicts with the Indians, to whom the mountain is sacred, and who refuse climbers, the National Park Service asks that you refrain from climbing in June, because this time there are a lot of Indian celebrations in the reserve and the region. Climbers have been required to register in the ranger station since 2006 ; going it alone is prohibited. When visiting the area for the first time, climbers must watch an introductory film about the cultural significance of the mountain for the Indians.
Devils Tower became internationally known for the 1977 film Close Encounters of the Third Kind. The finale of Steven Spielberg's feature film was recorded here. Devils Tower appeared there in visions to several people, a field directly next to the monument served as a landing base for spaceships of aliens.
At the beginning of August, the mountain is visited by thousands of motorcycle riders on their way to the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally in Sturgis , 130 km away . In most of the years these days are the days when the highest number of visitors to the area is reached.
Web links
- National Park Service: Devils Tower National Monument (official site; English)
Individual evidence
- ^ A b Ed DeWitt, JA Redden, David Buscher, AB Wilson: Geologic map of the Black Hills area, South Dakota and Wyoming (1: 250,000). Miscellaneous Investigations Series Map I-1910, US Department of the Interior / US Geological Survey, 1989 ( online )
- ↑ Genet Ide Duke: 40 Ar / 39 Ar laser incremental-heating ages of Devil's Tower and Paleocene – Eocene intrusions of the northern Black Hills, South Dakota and Wyoming. In: GSA 2002 Annual Meeting (Denver, October 27-30, 2002), Abstracts with Program. 2002, p. 473 ( online )
- ↑ Alvis L. Lisenbee: Tectonic History of the Black Hills Uplift. In: Eastern Powder River Basin - Black Hills. 39th Annual Field Conference Guidebook. Wyoming Geological Association, 1988, pp. 45-52 ( abstract )
- ↑ Genet Ide Duke: Black Hills – Alberta carbonatite – kimberlite linear trend: Slab edge at depth? In: Tectonophysics. Vol. 464, No. 1-4, 2009, pp. 186-194, doi : 10.1016 / j.tecto.2008.09.034
- ^ A b Frank R. Karner, Don L. Halvorson: The Devils Tower, Bear Lodge Mountains, Cenozoic igneous complex, northeastern Wyoming . In: Stanley S. Beus (Ed.): Centennial Field Guide Volume 2: Rocky Mountain Section of the Geological Society of America. Geological Society of America, Boulder, Colorado, 1987, ISBN 0-8137-5406-2 , pages 161-164
- ^ National Park Service - Devils Tower National Monument: Frequently Asked Questions
- ↑ This chapter follows unless otherwise stated: National Park Service - Devils Tower National Monument: How is Devils Tower a Sacred Site to American Indians
- ↑ National Park Service: First Stories (accessed June 17, 2019)
- ↑ This chapter follows the presentation by Ray H. Mattison: Devils Tower History. (pdf; 47 kB) National Park Service, December 22, 2004, accessed on September 24, 2016 (English).
- ↑ " Its [i. e. the Tower's] remarkable structure, its symmetry, and its prominence made it an unfailing object of wonder [...] It is a great remarkable obelisk of trachyte, with a columnar structure, giving it a vertically striated appearance, and it rises 625 feet almost perpendicular, from its base. Its summit is so entirely inaccessible that the energetic explorer, to whom the ascent of an ordinarily difficult crag is but a pleasant pastime, standing at its base could only look upward in despair of ever planting his feet on the top. “Henry Newton: Geology of the Black Hills. Pp. 1–222 in: Henry Newton, Walter P. Jenney: Report on the geology and resources of the Black hills of Dakota, with atlas. US Geographical and Geological Survey of the of the Rocky Mountain Region, Department of the Interior, Washington, DC, 1880, doi : 10.5962 / bhl.title.62403 , p. 201
- ^ Steve Roper and Allen Steck: Fifty Classic Climbs of North America , Sierra Club Books, San Francisco 1979, 1982, 1996. ISBN 0-87156-292-8 .
- ^ Mark Kroese: Fifty Favorite Climbs - The Ultimate North American Tick List. The Mountaineers Books, 2001. ISBN 978-0-89886-728-2 .
- ↑ Dingus McGee: Free Climbs of Devils Tower: A Poorperson's Guidebook , 14th Edition, Laramie, (Wyoming) 1996
- ^ John Harlin: Devils Tower Wyoming and The Black Hills, South Dakota , Chockstone, Falcon, Helena (Montana), 1996. ISBN 1-57540-028-6
- ↑ Zach Orenczak, Rachael Lynn: Devils Tower Climbing , Extreme Angles Publishing Laramie (Wyoming) 2006. ISBN 978-0-9746532-7-3
- ↑ National Park Service - Devils Tower National Monument: Plan your Visit
- ^ National Park Service - Devils Tower National Monument: Climbing Management Plan Update