You're standing in the middle of a Wyoming field. Flat grassland stretches in every direction. And rising 867 feet above you—taller than the Washington Monument—is a massive rock tower covered in vertical scratches that look like claw marks. Except they're not scratches. They're columns of rock, each one five to seven feet wide, running from bottom to top like the pipes of a colossal organ.
Geologists agree on one thing: Devils Tower started as magma buried beneath the Earth's surface millions of years ago. What they cannot agree on is how it formed. Volcanic plug? Laccolith? Stock intrusion? The theories multiply, but the tower keeps its secrets. Meanwhile, the Arapahoe people have known the answer for centuries. They call it Bear's Tipi. A girl turned into a bear and chased her siblings. They climbed onto a rock. The rock grew toward the sky to protect them. The bear clawed at it, leaving those massive vertical scratches. The children became the Pleiades—seven stars still visible in the night sky.
We discovered this story while researching America's strangest geological mysteries. It's the kind of thing that makes you stop and wonder: What else are we missing?
by JS
for the AdAI Ed. Team
