Attention R.V. World!!
The best of great is that you are all on the road to see this wonderful country, the United States of America and as such an adventure begins you just need to consider an add-on.
The deck is now that off the ground fact to comfortably settle your chairs and yourselves. the awning is optional however an umbrella adds the simplicity to glory as it gets hot out there in the afternoons, you know those hot summer nights need that not hot the lemonade (wink, wink). Now, just your smile and . . .
The piece duh resistance would measure the best of show as your shower room is at the end of the deck with a built in shower pan.
You'll need a door (talk to an R.V. man) at that area of the R.V. and the entire shower head just swings out onto your deck over your shower pan. The wall of covering is as seen in the series M*A*S*H!! That is not even all of it as your partner (the one whom pulls the entire deck unit out and sets those stabilizers just places the sink on the outside wall of the showering area and wham you have an outdoor sink to wash those blackberries, mix drinks, you get the kicker 🍸 as what is a day at Yosemite that makes that drive the best of relaxing? Convenience!!
Good driving, smile lots as you always have done and enjoy those Parks, mostly go that park with that
Devils Tower
| Devils Tower | |
|---|---|
| Matȟó Thípila (Lakota) | |
Devils Tower, 2017
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| Highest point | |
| Elevation | 5,112 ft (1,558 m) NAVD 88[1] |
| Coordinates | 44°35′25″N 104°42′55″WCoordinates: 44°35′25″N 104°42′55″W [2] |
| Geography | |
| Location | Crook County, Wyoming, United States |
| Parent range | Bear Lodge Mountains, part of the Black Hills |
| Topo map | USGS Devils Tower |
| Geology | |
| Mountain type | Laccolith |
| Climbing | |
| First ascent | William Rogers and Willard Ripley, July 4, 1893 |
| Easiest route | Durrance Route |
| Devils Tower National Monument | |
|---|---|
IUCN category III (natural monument or feature)
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Location in the United States
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| Nearest city | Hulett, Wyoming |
| Coordinates | 44°35′26″N 104°43′0″W |
| Area | 1,346 acres (5.45 km2)[3] |
| Established | September 24, 1906[4] |
| Visitors | 496,210 (in 2016)[5] |
| Governing body | National Park Service |
| Website | Devils Tower National Monument |
Devils Tower was the first declared United States National Monument, established on September 24, 1906, by President Theodore Roosevelt. The monument's boundary encloses an area of 1,347 acres (545 ha).
In recent years, about 1% of the monument's 400,000 annual visitors climbed Devils Tower, mostly using traditional climbing techniques.[7]
Contents
Name
Devils Tower, 1900
Native American names for the monolith include: "Bear's House" or "Bear's Lodge" (or "Bear's Tipi", "Home of the Bear", "Bear's Lair"; Cheyenne, Lakota Matȟó Thípila, Crow Daxpitcheeaasáao "Home of Bears"[10]), "Aloft on a Rock" (Kiowa), "Tree Rock", "Great Gray Horn",[8] and "Brown Buffalo Horn" (Lakota Ptehé Ǧí).[citation needed]
In 2005, a proposal to recognize several Native American ties through the additional designation of the monolith as Bear Lodge National Historic Landmark met with opposition from United States Representative Barbara Cubin, arguing that a "name change will harm the tourist trade and bring economic hardship to area communities".[11] In November 2014, one Arvol Looking Horse again proposed renaming the geographical feature "Bear Lodge", and submitted the request to the United States Board on Geographic Names. A second proposal was submitted to request that the U.S. acknowledge the "offensive" mistake in keeping the current name and to rename the monument and sacred site Bear Lodge National Historic Landmark. The formal public comment period ended in fall 2015. Local state senator Ogden Driskill opposed the change.[12][13] The name was not changed.[14][not in citation given]
Geological history
Red sandstone and siltstone cliffs above the Belle Fourche River
Map of Wyoming National Parks and landmarks, showing Devils Tower (upper right) far east of Yellowstone (upper left), north across the state from Cheyenne.
Above the Spearfish Formation is a thin band of white gypsum, called the Gypsum Springs Formation. This layer of gypsum was deposited during the Jurassic period, 195 to 136 million years ago.
Created as sea levels and climates repeatedly changed, gray-green shales (deposited in low-oxygen environments such as marshes) were interbedded with fine-grained sandstones, limestones, and sometimes thin beds of red mudstone. This composition, called the Stockade Beaver member, is part of the Sundance Formation. The Hulett Sandstone member, also part of the Sundance Formation, is composed of yellow fine-grained sandstone. Resistant to weathering, it forms the nearly vertical cliffs that encircle the Tower.
During the Paleocene Epoch, 56 to 66 million years ago, the Rocky Mountains and the Black Hills were uplifted. Magma rose through the crust, intruding into the existing sedimentary rock layers.[15]
Theories of formation
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Phonolite porphyry, the rock type of which Devils Tower is made
Close-up of the columns
In 1907, scientists Darton and O'Hara decided that Devils Tower must be an eroded remnant of a laccolith. A laccolith is a large mass of igneous rock which is intruded through sedimentary rock beds without reaching the surface, but makes a rounded bulge in the sedimentary layers above. This theory was quite popular in the early 20th century, since numerous studies had earlier been done on laccoliths in the Southwest.
Other theories have suggested that Devils Tower is a volcanic plug or that it is the neck of an extinct volcano. Presumably, if Devils Tower is a volcanic plug, any volcanics created by it — volcanic ash, lava flows, volcanic debris — would have been eroded away long ago. Some pyroclastic material of the same age as Devils Tower has been identified elsewhere in Wyoming.
The igneous material that forms the Tower is a phonolite porphyry intruded about 40.5 million years ago,[16] a light to dark-gray or greenish-gray igneous rock with conspicuous crystals of white feldspar.[17] As the magma cooled, hexagonal (and sometimes 4-, 5-, and 7-sided) columns formed, each about six feet in diameter. As the rock continued to cool, the vertical columns shrank in cross-section (horizontally) and cracks began to occur at 120-degree angles, generally forming compact 6-sided columns. The nearby Missouri Buttes, 3.5 miles (5.6 km) to the northwest of Devils Tower, are also composed of columnar phonolite of the same age. Devils Postpile National Monument in California and Giant's Causeway in Northern Ireland, are also columnar basalt, which are superficially similar, but with columns typically 2 feet (0.61 m) diameter.
Devils Tower did not visibly protrude out of the landscape until the overlying sedimentary rocks eroded away. As the elements wore down the softer sandstones and shales, the more resistant igneous rock making up the tower survived the erosional forces. As a result, the gray columns of Devils Tower began to appear as an isolated mass above the landscape.
As rain and snow continue to erode the sedimentary rocks surrounding the Tower's base, more of Devils Tower will be exposed. Nonetheless, the exposed portions of the Tower still experience certain amounts of erosion. Cracks along the columns are subject to water and ice erosion. Erosion due to the expansion of ice along cracks and fractures within rock formations is common in colder climates, a prime example being the featured formations at Bryce Canyon National Park. Portions, or even entire columns, of rock at Devils Tower are continually breaking off and falling. Piles of broken columns, boulders, small rocks, and stones, called scree, lie at the base of the tower, indicating that it was once wider than it is today.[15]
Native American culture
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A sign informs visitors of the Native American heritage.
Another version tells that two Sioux boys wandered far from their village when Mato the bear, a huge creature that had claws the size of tipi poles, spotted them, and wanted to eat them for breakfast. He was almost upon them when the boys prayed to Wakan Tanka the Creator to help them. They rose up on a huge rock, while Mato tried to get up from every side, leaving huge scratch marks as he did. Finally, he sauntered off, disappointed and discouraged. The bear came to rest east of the Black Hills at what is now Bear Butte. Wanblee, the eagle, helped the boys off the rock and back to their village. A painting depicting this legend by artist Herbert A. Collins hangs over the fireplace in the visitor's center at Devils Tower.
In a Cheyenne version of the story, the giant bear pursues the girls and kills most of them. Two sisters escape back to their home with the bear still tracking them. They tell two boys that the bear can only be killed with an arrow shot through the underside of its foot. The boys have the sisters lead the bear to Devils Tower and trick it into thinking they have climbed the rock. The boys attempt to shoot the bear through the foot while it repeatedly attempts to climb up and slides back down leaving more claw marks each time. The bear was finally scared off when an arrow came very close to its left foot. This last arrow continued to go up and never came down.[18]
Wooden Leg, a Northern Cheyenne, relates another legend told to him by an old man as they were traveling together past the Devils Tower around 1866–1868. An Indian man decided to sleep at the base of Bear Lodge next to a buffalo head. In the morning he found that both he and the buffalo head had been transported to the top of the rock by the Great Medicine with no way down. He spent another day and night on the rock with no food or water. After he had prayed all day and then gone to sleep, he awoke to find that the Great Medicine had brought him back down to the ground, but left the buffalo head at the top near the edge. Wooden Leg maintains that the buffalo head was clearly visible through the old man's spyglass. At the time, the tower had never been climbed and a buffalo head at the top was otherwise inexplicable.[19]
The buffalo head gives this story special significance for the Northern Cheyenne. All the Cheyenne maintained in their camps a sacred teepee to the Great Medicine containing the tribal sacred objects. In the case of the Northern Cheyenne, the sacred object was a buffalo head.[20]
Recent history
Ponderosa pine forest east of Devils Tower
The 1977 movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind used the formation as a plot element and as the location of its climactic scenes.[23][24] Its release was the cause of a large increase in visitors and climbers to the monument.[25]
Climbing
Old climbing ladder on Devil's Tower
In 1941 George Hopkins parachuted onto Devils Tower, without permission, as a publicity stunt resulting from a bet. He had intended to descend by a 1,000 ft (300 m) rope dropped to him after successfully landing on the butte, but the package containing the rope, a sledge hammer and a car axle to be driven into the rock as an anchor point slid over the edge. As the weather deteriorated, a second attempt was made to drop equipment, but Hopkins deemed it unusable after the rope became snarled and frozen due to the rain and wind. Hopkins was stranded for six days, exposed to cold, rain and 50 mph (80 km/h) winds before a mountain rescue team led by Jack Durrance, who had successfully climbed Devils Tower in 1938, finally reached him and brought him down.[26][27] His entrapment and subsequent rescue was widely covered by the media of the time.[28]
Today, hundreds of climbers scale the sheer rock walls of Devils Tower each summer. The most common route is the Durrance Route, which was the second free route established in 1938. There are many established and documented climbing routes covering every side of the tower, ascending the various vertical cracks and columns of the rock. The difficulty of these routes range from relatively easy to some of the most challenging in the world. All climbers are required to register with a park ranger before and after attempting a climb. No overnight camping at the summit is allowed; climbers return to base on the same day they ascend.[29]
The Tower is sacred to several Plains tribes, including the Lakota, Cheyenne and Kiowa. Because of this, many Indian leaders objected to climbers ascending the monument, considering this to be a desecration. The climbers argued that they had a right to climb the Tower, since it is on federal land. A compromise was eventually reached with a voluntary climbing ban during the month of June when the tribes are conducting ceremonies around the monument. Climbers are asked, but not required, to stay off the Tower in June. According to the PBS documentary In the Light of Reverence, approximately 85% of climbers honor the ban and voluntarily choose not to climb the Tower during the month of June. However, several climbers along with the Mountain States Legal Foundation sued the Park Service, claiming an inappropriate government entanglement with religion.[30]
Wildlife
Deer grazing at dusk at the entrance to Devils Tower
See also
Four areas of Devils Tower National Monument on the National Register of Historic Places:- Entrance Road
- Entrance Station (Devils Tower National Monument)
- Old Headquarters Area Historic District
- Tower Ladder (Devils Tower National Monument)
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