“The fame of that great natural wonder, the Devils Tower, is by no means confined to local boundaries. It is indeed known to some extent in all nations,” proclaimed a 1906 newspaper article. Indeed, long before the 20th century, Devils Tower, located in the Black Hills of Wyoming, was a natural wonder that brought people to its base to wonder at its summit.
Scientists suggest that Devils Tower began forming around 65 million years ago, quite some time before the first humans set eyes on the majestic 1,267-foot tall intrusive igneous rock. It is assumed that early fur traders saw the massive rock tower protruding into the sky while traversing west and then back east. Well before American fur traders began their treks across the frontier in the late 1700s, Native American tribes revered the location and did so by a very different name.
Tribes, like the Arapaho, Cheyenne, Crow, Lakota, Shoshone, and Kiowa, didn’t make reference to a devil or any other sinister spiritual being, but rather a bear. Most commonly referred to as Bear’s Lodge, one ancient story claims that several girls fled from a ravenous bear. They found a rock formation and climbed atop it. When the bear came close, the formation grew skyward, keeping the girls out of the reach of the animal. The bear, still hungry, tried climbing the rock, which explains the jagged formations along its walls.
Gold and the Expedition
Gold miners in the Black Hills. The gold rushes that resulted from Custer's discoveries antagonized the Sioux Indians and provoked the war in which Custer lost his life. Public Domain
The Black Hills, however, became the location of more than controversy over the name of a rock formation. It became the place of confrontation and war. Shortly after the discovery of gold during Col. George Custer’s Black Hills Expedition of 1874, the Great Sioux War erupted in 1876. In between Custer’s Expedition and the Sioux War was the Dodge Expedition.
The Dodge Expedition was a military and scientific expedition led by Col. Richard Irving Dodge into the Black Hills. It was during this time that Bear’s Lodge received its new name. Dodge gazed at the massive structure overlooking the Great Plains and claimed it was “one of the most remarkable peaks in this or any country.” Henry Newton, a geological assistant who was part of the expedition, noted that it was “an unfailing object of wonder.”
Dodge wrote a book about the expedition called “The Black Hills” in which he explained the Indians called the tower “The Bad God’s Tower.” Newton, to an extent, agreed, though he understood the name to have long been Mato Tipila (Bear Lodge), but had only recently been changed to be known among the Indians as “’the bad god’s tower,‘ or in better English, ’the devil’s tower.’“ The name change, however, may have been a mistranslation of the Lakota language, as the name for “bad god or evil spirit” is ”wakansica,“ and the name for “black bear” is ”wahanksica.”
Forestry and Opportunity
Despite the controversy, the new name stuck. The same year that the Great Sioux War began, Congress created the Office of Special Agent within the Department of Agriculture (USDA), a department established in 1862. The role of Special Agent was to assess the condition of America’s forests. Five years later, in 1881, the USDA expanded the Office of Special Agent into the Division of Forestry, though the role, over the next decade, remained empowered to do little more than assess national forests.
As settlers trekked into the Black Hills, speculators intermingled among them. The Preemption Act of 1841 allowed for people living on federally owned land to purchase up to 160 acres for cheap before the land went for sale to the general public.
In early 1890 (the same year Wyoming became a state), Charles Graham, a Wyoming resident in Crook County, applied for 160 acres, which would have included Devils Tower. Graham’s application, however, was an example of how the Preemption Act was often abused. Graham, who worked for a large ranching operation, planned to hand the acreage over to the ranch.
However, Lewis Groff, commissioner of the General Land Office (GLO), placed a stay on the application until an investigation was conducted. He wrote to the District Land Office in Wyoming explaining, “From information received at this office it appears that a great national wonder locally known as the ‘Devils Tower’ technically called the ‘Bear Lodge Butte,’ is situated in Sec. 7, T.53N., R.65W, to which title is being sought for speculative purposes.”
Graham’s application was canceled by the GLO in January 1892. Less than a year before this cancelation, Congress passed the Forest Reserve Act of 1891, which empowered the President to “set apart and reserve, in any state or territory having public land bearing forests, in any part of the public lands, wholly or in part covered with timber or undergrowth, whether of commercial value or not, as public reservations.”
One member of Congress, Sen. Francis Warren, of Wyoming, attempted to include an amendment that would have placed Devils Tower and the surrounding forest within the bill’s protection. The amendment was defeated.
Francis E. Warren, Republican senator and territorial governor from Wyoming. Public Domain
But that defeat did not deter Warren. A month after Graham’s cancelation, he contacted the GLO, which was now led by Thomas H. Carter, requesting that Devils Tower and the Little Missouri Buttes fall under federal protection. The GLO consented and a few weeks later established a 60-square mile forest preserve that included the requested areas. In June, the GLO reduced the area to 18.75 square miles. The following month, Warren introduced a bill to establish “Devils Tower National Park.” The bill found no traction, and the area maintained its status as a forest reserve.
The Great Conservationist President
During this decade of growth within the Department of Agriculture and the struggle to protect Devils Tower and the surrounding areas, Theodore Roosevelt, the future 26th president, was undergoing his own growth. In 1880, he had graduated Harvard and gotten married. The next year, he was elected to the New York Assembly. In 1883, while awaiting the birth of his first child, he vacationed to the Badlands of North Dakota to hunt buffalo and purchased a ranch before his return. On Feb. 14, 1884, two days after the birth of his daughter, tragedy struck, as both his wife and mother died within hours of each other. He left politics and New York, and sought refuge at his Elkhorn Ranch, located more than 200 miles north of Devils Tower.
Before the decade was up, Roosevelt would remarry and return to New York and politics. A summer visit in 1890 was the last time he stepped foot on Elkhorn Ranch. By 1898, he had sold it. The ranching experience, nonetheless, was indelible. Roosevelt wrote several books on ranching, including “Hunting Trips of a Ranchman,” and “Ranch Life and the Hunting-Trail.” Roosevelt became an outdoorsman and would become known as one of America’s greatest.
He also became known as one of the nation’s greatest conservationists and presidents. The combination of the two would have lasting effects on the country.
The Mondell-Roosevelt Connection
Although Warren had pursued protecting Devils Tower as a national park, it was Rep. Frank Mondell, of Newcastle, Wyoming, who is credited with having the greatest influence on the future of the igneous rock. Mondell represented a district that was located approximately 60 miles south of Devils Tower. His first term in office (1895–97) came to an abrupt end after losing his reelection bid in 1896. But as fate would have it, he was appointed assistant commissioner of the GLO, serving from 1897 to 1899. He returned to the House of Representatives in 1899 and remained in office until 1923, ending his final two terms as majority leader.
Frank Wheeler Mondell, U.S. Representative from Wyoming. Public Domain
Mondell’s land interests placed him on the Committee on Irrigation of Arid Lands and the Committee on Public Lands. He wasn’t particularly a conservationist, as his voting record shows. But he was interested in protecting Devils Tower.
Mondell had been appointed to the GLO during the first term of the McKinley Administration. After the untimely death of his vice president, Garret Hobart, in 1899—a year before reelection—William McKinley ran the presidential office without a vice president. For reelection, he chose Roosevelt as his running mate. Ten months after winning reelection, McKinley was killed by an assassin’s bullet and Roosevelt was sworn in as president.
Mondell apparently had McKinley’s and now Roosevelt’s ear. During the president’s 25-state tour during April and May of 1903, Roosevelt made a stop in Mondell’s Newcastle. His tour was unmistakably nature- and conservation-driven, as he spent time with naturalists John Burroughs and John Muir (known as Father of the National Parks), and made stops at Yellowstone and Yosemite (America’s first and third national parks, respectively). Additionally, while in Newcastle, Roosevelt made a speech from a platform decorated with a stuffed bear, deer, and eagle in the background.
The next year, Roosevelt won reelection, and his conservationist views became more extensive and expansive. Mondell, however, remained formidable against federal overreach when it came to public domain. Mondell and Roosevelt were politicians moving in separate directions regarding conservation.
The Devil Gets Its Due
On Feb. 1, 1905, Congress passed the Forest Transfer Act, which “transferred the administration of the Federal forest reserves from the Department of the Interior’s General Land Office to the Department of Agriculture’s Bureau of Forestry.” A month later, the Bureau of Forestry became the Forest Service, and by 1907, the federal forest reserves, like what Devils Tower had been, became known as national forests (accounting for approximately 56 million acres of land).
Devils Tower, however, would become something else entirely.
On June 8, 1906, Congress passed the Antiquities Act, which empowered the president “to declare by public proclamation historic landmarks, historic and prehistoric structures, and other objects of historic or scientific interest that are situated upon the lands owned or controlled by the Government of the United States to be national monuments.”
Mondell was apparently supportive of the bill, as it passed unanimously in the House. Part of his support must have stemmed from the assurance that much like the Forest Reserve Act of 1891, the Antiquities Act “proposes to create small reservations reserving only so much land as may be absolutely necessary for the preservation of these interesting relics of prehistoric times.”
The bill presented a fast track to further protect Devils Tower. It was during this week in history, on Sept. 24, 1906, that Devils Tower became the nation’s first national monument. The preservation of the area was also in keeping with the spirit and letter of the recent law, as the national monument covered only 1,153 acres, an area Roosevelt believed to be “sufficiently large to provide for the proper care and management of the monument.”
Despite Mondell attaining his desired political and preservationist goal, a month later the Cheyenne Leader reported that “Mondell not only fought President Roosevelt to the bitter end during the last session of Congress on every important measure upon which the mind and heart of the President was centered, but since Congress adjourned, he has not let up in his antagonism to the nation’s chief.”
This may have had to do with Roosevelt’s rapid expansion and extensive use of the Antiquities Act and other preservation laws. According to the National Park Service, Roosevelt “set aside over 200 million acres of public lands during his time as president. These lands included national forests, federal bird reserves, national parks and eighteen national monuments.”
According to a 2019 report by the Congressional Research Service, since the passage of the Antiquities Act of 1906, “presidents have used the Antiquities Act to establish 158 national monuments, reserving millions of acres of land in the process, and to modify existing monuments more than 90 times.”
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Dustin Bass
Author
Dustin Bass is an author and co-host of The Sons of History podcast. He also writes two weekly series for The Epoch Times: Profiles in History and This Week in History.
