Devil’s Tower

Legends tell of Sioux girls who were out picking flowers one day when they found themselves chased by bears.

The Great Spirit who felt sympathy for them lifted the ground beneath their feet and raised them to safety.

The bears were not able to climb the rocks and fell, leaving scratching marks down the side of the rock face.

The Devil's Tower

This is only one of the Native American legends which surround one of the most interesting pieces of geology that exists.

The Tower itself is a sacred place to many native American tribes including the Lakota, the Cheyenne and the Kiowa, and each has a different name for what Americans know as Devils Tower.

For this reason many Native Americans protested when climbers decided to scale the tower and they sought, and gained a ban on climbing during the month of June when they conduct ceremonies around the Tower.

In Light of Reverence, a PBS documentary show says that approximately 85% of climbers honor the ban and voluntarily choose not to climb the Tower during the month of June.
Some climbers, disgruntled by the ban have sued.

Devil's tower

Devils Tower is technically a monolith, or the neck of a volcano, located in Wyoming.
Devils Rock is one of the first US National Monuments which was created in 1906.

No one is quite certain exactly what Devils Monument is, or how it was created although many ideas and hypothesis exist.

For more information on Devils Tower and how it may have been created, visit the guys at Wikipedia.