Devils Tower
16/04/23 09:56 Filed in: Travel | Photography
Last October, we drove to South Dakota. On our way back to the Pacific Northwest, we took a side trip up into Northeast Wyoming to drive by Devils Tower. It was a geographical sight featured in the movie,
Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
I came across a site that describes how such sights came by their name. This is what is listed for Devils Tower.
Devils Tower is an impressive rock formation that stands 867 feet high above the Black Hills of northwestern Wyoming, considered sacred by Indigenous cultures. When settlers first arrived in this part of the country, the rock was labeled on maps as “Bear Lodge,” a translation for the common Lakota name Mato Tipila. However, the name changed when Colonel Richard Irving Dodge led a geology and mapmaking expedition to the site. Dodge wrote that the Indigenous people called the place “bad god’s tower,” which eventually led to the adoption of the name Devils Tower. However, this is believed to be a bad translation, as no records have ever shown that Native Americans considered the tower to be associated with evil spirits.
Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
I came across a site that describes how such sights came by their name. This is what is listed for Devils Tower.
Devils Tower is an impressive rock formation that stands 867 feet high above the Black Hills of northwestern Wyoming, considered sacred by Indigenous cultures. When settlers first arrived in this part of the country, the rock was labeled on maps as “Bear Lodge,” a translation for the common Lakota name Mato Tipila. However, the name changed when Colonel Richard Irving Dodge led a geology and mapmaking expedition to the site. Dodge wrote that the Indigenous people called the place “bad god’s tower,” which eventually led to the adoption of the name Devils Tower. However, this is believed to be a bad translation, as no records have ever shown that Native Americans considered the tower to be associated with evil spirits.
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