Devils Tower columnar phonolite
— — a rock that came up as one long breath.
Not only on a wall.
“An 867-foot stump of pale phonolite porphyry rising out of the ponderosa pine and red sandstone of the Belle Fourche valley. The columns are mostly six-sided, though some have four, five, or seven, and the longest run nearly the full height of the tower. The Lakota call it Mato Tipila, the Bear Lodge. Theodore Roosevelt made it the first national monument in 1906. from the studio
Devils Tower columnar phonolite, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Devils Tower rises 867 feet from its base in the Bear Lodge Mountains of Crook County, Wyoming, reaching 5,112 feet above sea level. The summit is roughly an acre and a half of nearly flat ground. The tower is sacred to more than twenty Native American tribes, including the Lakota, Cheyenne, Kiowa, and Crow, who know it as Mato Tipila or Bear Lodge. President Theodore Roosevelt proclaimed it the first United States national monument on September 24, 1906, under the newly passed Antiquities Act.
The rock is phonolite porphyry, an intrusive igneous rock chemically close to syenite, emplaced about 50 million years ago in the Eocene. As the magma cooled and contracted, it fractured into the polygonal columns that now define the tower; most have six sides, but four, five, and seven-sided columns also occur. Some columns are over 600 feet long and 8 feet across. The surrounding red sandstone and shale of the Spearfish Formation has eroded away over millions of years, leaving the harder phonolite standing in relief.
The monument is open year-round, with the visitor center open seasonally from April through October. The 1.3-mile Tower Trail loops the base through ponderosa pine and offers the standard view circuit. Climbing the columns is a long-established practice, with roughly 5,000 to 6,000 ascents recorded each year; the Park Service requests a voluntary climbing closure in June out of respect for indigenous ceremonial use. The monument is on US Highway 24 about 27 miles north of Interstate 90 at Sundance.