National Parks
Portfolio

Cover

Contents

Foreword

Parks vs Monuments

Acadia

Bryce Canyon

Carlsbad Caverns

Crater Lake

General Grant

Glacier

Grand Canyon

Grand Teton

Hawaii

Hot Springs

Lassen Volcanic

Mesa Verde

Mount McKinley

Mount Rainier

Platt

Rocky Mountain

Seqoia

Wind Cave

Yellowstone

Yosemite

Zion

Monuments

National Parks Portfolio

National Monuments

THE DEVILS TOWER, WYOMING

DEVILS TOWER NATIONAL MONUMENT

THIS extraordinary mass of igneous rock is one of the most conspicuous features in the Black Hills region of Wyoming. The tower is a steep-sided shaft rising six hundred feet above a rounded ridge of sedimentary rocks, about six hundred feet high, on the west bank of the Belle Fourche River. Its nearly flat top is elliptical in outline. Its sides are strongly fluted by the great columns of igneous rock, and are nearly perpendicular, except ne ar the top, where there is some rounding; and near the bottom, where there is considerable outward flare. The tower has been scaled in the past y means of special apparatus, but only at considerable risk.

The great columns of which the tower consists are mostly pentagonal in shape, but some are four or six sided.

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Last Modified: Mon, Oct 31, 2002 10:00:00 pm PDT
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