Devils Tower - First National Monument
After a few days in Sturgis, SD our next stop was further west to the Spearfish / Black Hills KOA Holiday which would be our launch point to visit Devils Tower National Monument (on April 30, 2022) which is an hour west back into WY. On the way, we wanted to stop at Deadwood, SD but it was raining hard so we just drove through the main street instead. That part of Deadwood seemed mostly hotels, bars, restaurants, gambling, and touristy shtick capitalizing on the name and history. I was getting Bourbon St vibes on a smaller scale so seems like a fun place to spend an evening or weekend with friends if we were able to return someday.
Devils Tower
As for Devils Tower, it is probably more well known by what it looks like vs its name at least nowadays. Its most iconic appearance was probably in the 1977 Steve Spielberg film Close Encounters of the Third Kind but it’s been used in all kinds of lesser-known movies and TV shows.
In 1906, President Theodore Roosevelt proclaimed it the first national monument. It’s an igneous rock formation coming out of the ground formed from a magma intrusion and looks very different from the surrounding landscape. In fact, it stood out from miles away and I got a great shot of it against the contrast of everything else in the area (see below for the picture).
At the small Visitor Center, there was actually a decent amount of people also there. It was cold and so we just planned on doing the 3mi Red Beds trail that goes full circle around the base. There were still patches of snow and the trail was very muddy at parts. Check out the pictures to see how different the monument looks from different angles.
