Devil’s Tower in Wyoming had historically served as a beacon to land travelers. In 1977, it was portrayed as the bullseye for extraterrestrial travelers in Close Encounters of the Third Kind (synopsis of the plot here). It wasn’t just another mountain. It expressed a sense of something mysteriously powerful and beyond humanity. Today, those narratives are merging as UFO enthusiasts meet at the site to reinforce their belief in the reality of alien visitation.
Devil’s Tower, looking like a lithified gigantic tree stump jutting from the ground, is clearly iconic and unusual. It is a volcanically-derived feature that protrudes from the landscape in such a spectacular way that it induces awe, reverence, and fascination for those who come upon it. It’s no wonder Steven Spielberg used it as the key location in his movie. In the film, the character Roy Neary is paranormally drawn to the site. He sees it in his mind and is compelled to recreate it in mashed potatoes and in the living room. The tower is featured not only in the storyline but in the movie promotion as well where the Tower becomes a key character itself.
Because of the popularity of the movie, millions of people know Devil’s Tower as a special location endowed with fictional, mythical, and mystical connotations. It is truly a landmark of spooky geology [1].
According to Sacred Places North America: 108 Destinations, by Brad Olsen, strange lights and other odd phenomena have been reported in the vicinity of the towers. Volcanic areas have a well-known association with UFO sightings. Some people think geothermal areas are paranormal hotspots. But what’s real and what’s fiction?
The National Park Service has a page with excellent information about this very first U.S, National monument, an honor bestowed in 1906 – how it was named, specifics on its location, height and circumference, and why it is called “Devil’s Tower”. Consult that source for the official information. I’ll just note here that the origin of the phonolite porphyry body protruding from the surrounding landscape is generally geologically explainable. This unusual blob of rock jutting out from the surrounding plain is less prone to erosion and breakdown. It’s an igneous intrusion – liquid rock that cooled under the surface. Columnar jointing of a magmatic intrusion is just normal physics, similar to the formation of mud cracks, though it looks manufactured [2]. The phonolite rocks even ring when struck. (Stay tuned for more coming on this site about “ringing rocks.) The same physical processes formed the steps of the Giant’s Causeway in Ireland, the angular Devil’s Post-pile in California and the magnificent Fingals Cave in Scotland, all of which also have their spooky legends…
The latest idea on the geological formation of Devil’s Tower is that it is a maar-diatreme eruption/lava dome – a hypothesis based on the alignment of magnetic minerals in the rock samples studied.
The origin of this striking feature is, unsurprisingly, the source of incredible legends by natives who claim the land and were inspired by it. The NPS closes the monument to climbers in June out of respect for the native ceremonies. The native legends include the well-known story of a giant bear chasing young girls. By the power of the Great Spirit, the mountain rose up, and the bear’s attempts to scale the mountain resulted in the claw “scratch marks” along the perimeter. We can now scientifically explain the structure of the tower but the legend remains as a poetic reminder that people are intimately connected to nature.
The rock body is not hollow, but totally solid. There is a legend that a hoard of gold is hidden in a cave with a secret entrance. This has never been found (even though the site has been well-explored), because it doesn’t exist. But what of its sacred and otherworldly associations?
Modern pop culture laid its claim to Devil’s Tower, particularly in Fall of 2017, which marks the 40th anniversary of Close Encounters release, accentuating the Tower’s place as a modern Mount Sinai and a beacon for spiritual beliefs. Unsurprisingly, the Tower is becoming a mecca for UFO proponents. In mid-September 2017, the first Devil’s Tower UFO Rendezvous was held at Hulette, WY. The attendees “celebrate all things UFO” including the movie that helped bring attention and public acceptance to the idea of alien visitation. Many people believe aliens have and still are visiting earth. The aim of the festival was to promote UFO awareness and spur interest in the investigation of these reported anomalies. While the Tower is not a historic “hotspot” of UFO activity (as the remote deserts of the Western US are), there have been a handful of UFO reports. It’s a popular assumption that a magnificent site has its own paranormal aura. One logged report from 2015 shows a tiny white object in a photo of the tower (likely a camera artifact).
Another from 2014 shows a typical oblong saucer shape over the tower (could be a windshield defect, insect, or hoax).
Both reports are not very anomalous and are weak evidence of alien craft, but there is a continued effort to portray the site in association with UFOs. A writer for VICE – Motherboard tells his story of seeing a cigar-shaped, silver object move across the sky in 1993 when he was 11 years old. I expect this reputation for strange sightings will grow as more people embrace a cosmic, spiritual belief in connection to this location. This place is so amazing, it seems obvious it SHOULD draw visitors from outer space as well as from earth. Thus, any anomaly or event reported here will be seen in that frame. The natural, impressive, and awe-inspiring feature engenders in visitors a sense that this land holds a value beyond our scientific understanding. It’s spooky, for sure, but it’s a natural treasure of the United States, no matter what you believe. The spooky reputation of Devil’s Tower will grow in the coming decade as tales (credible or incredible) propagate on the Internet and people come to seek out their own special experiences.
Check out this cool video by the people involved in Close Encounters. Joe Alves, Production Designer and Location Scout for the film describes how the incorporation of this location raised the “creative and spiritual sense of the film”.
- Of course, Devil’s Tower has been included on a nearly N-S ley line that also goes through the conspiracy and occult-oriented Denver Airport, NORAD – a UFO tracking site, and the infamous Roswell, the town where a UFO never crashed. That depends on how wide you draw the line, though.
- Vitaliano, Dorothy B. (1973) Legends of the Earth: Their Geologic Origins. p 41.
A reminder that drones are flying around the feature, here is beautiful high-quality footage giving you a view you’ve not seen before of the Tower.
Update
I’ve come across a number of items to update this piece.
UFO researcher David Clarke references a (tiny) Christian UFO group in the UK – CHRUFORA – that believed that UFOs were an evil idea, borne of Satan. They protested Close Encounters citing that the depiction of “Devil’s Tower” as the key location in the movie was evidence that aliens were demonic. It didn’t matter that the plot depicted them as more angelic and good than demonic because “Satan’s demons are able to disguise themselves as “angels of light” to deceive world leaders”. As with other Native American sacred sites, white people literally demonized the beliefs in order to justify their hatred and decimation of the native peoples and any “god” that was not the Christian god.
I also came across the analogy of the Tower as a place of ascension reflecting both the god-like aliens coming down from the sky to take up to space the lucky people on board and the idea of the Great Spirit rescuing the Native children from the bear by raising up the Tower. The conclusion of the latter story I hadn’t noted is that the children become the stars of the Pleiades constellation.
The UFO Rendezvous event that was an impetus for this story on the Devil’s Tower as a UFO hotspot was discontinued after 2018. This does dim the association of the Tower with modern UFO mythos. But the movie cemented it’s status permanently.
Finally, I produced a video with some of these updates and more detailed information that is not in this post. Please enjoy.
Update – Tree stump
I got so many comments asking about (or declaring that) Devils Tower was the remains of an ancient giant tree stump that I produced a video about it. We know that it is volcanic in nature and not a fossil because we have other examples of this around the world. We have excellent supporting evidence to show that trees never got this massive (because they physically couldn’t). As with the ideas of flat earth, the ridiculous interpretations of natural features are promoted by those with an anti-science bias, and who have no education in geological processes.
I love the fact that at the end of Close Encounters when the mothership lands near (on?) Devil’s Tower and disgorges its human passengers, among the first are men dressed in military uniforms and when they report and announce their names, they are the airmen who disappeared in Flight 19.
As Chris Peebles wrote in Watch the Skies (his history of UFOlogy from the POV of a developing folk mythology), CE3K was the first major “flying saucer” movie to approach the subject from a perspective of Myth — of ordinary people swept up into Mythological events.
I saw that movie in ’77 with the Cal Poly Pomona SF Club and still remember a LOT of the scenes — the “Come Around Idiot Come Around” sight gag with the headlights coming up from the rear, the “Tinkerbelle” foo fighter trailing the other three during the wild police chase, and the sacrifice of so many mashed potatoes and vanilla ice cream in the Cal Poly Dorm Commons, carved into miniature Devils’ Towers — “Look! I’m Richard Dreyfuss!”
In commemoration:
In 2016 my gf & myself took a cross country trip & drove through the Badlands, it was a total spiritual experience for myself…unfortunately I had forgotten about Close Encounters, I have to go back there to see Devil’s Tower again! ?