Devil's Tower - what, no horns?! (20 July)

Actually, this tower was first known as Bear Lodge and only in 1875 was renamed by Col. Richard Dodge, who was looking for gold in the area. The Kiowa tell the story of seven sisters who were playing, when they were chased by  a bear. They jumped onto a tree stump, that then grew into the air and resisting the claws of the mighty bear, bore the sisters into the sky where they became the stars of the Pleiades.

Rocky in his element

Before travelling to Devil's Tower today, we dropped in at the Crook County Museum where Rocky, a teacher of Native American History showed us the diorama of General Custer's troops, camping just outside of Sundance on their expedition through the Black Hills. The government had just returned the Black Hills to the Lakota Indians and in 1874 Custer was supposed to make sure no white settlers were left in the area. However, when he returned from his journey with news of the wealth of gold and good grazing land he saw, the treaty with the Lakotas was broken ... for the second time. We could have stayed much longer in Rocky's fascinating little museum, but we still had some travelling to do.

In 1906 President Theodore Roosevelt proclaimed Devil's Tower the first national monument. The area has been carefully improved and made accessible to tourists, while trying to maintain respect for the Native American's special spiritual attachment to the tower. There is a paved 1 1/2 mile path around the tower with explanatory signs and benches where visitors can sit and enjoy the stillness of the forest and the aura of the mountain. Sure, there are a lot of people underway, but mostly they show respect and awe of Devil's Tower. And no, we didn't see any horned monsters from the underworld, but we did observe some very impressive horns as can be seen below.
Leaving the park, we drove into Hulett for a quick visit to another museum, then continued on towards Montana ... we thought. After we crossed the border into South Dakota, we realised we had been travelling 30 miles in the wrong direction. Luckily, we didn't have to drive all the way back; we can join up with the road we were aiming for with just a few miles of detour and are spending the night in Beautiful Fork, AKA Belle Fourche.

 

 

Now, those are horns!!

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