Between a Rock and a Holy Place

How the stage is set for new conflict over climbing at Devils Tower and other popular climbing spots

By Heather Hansen

Travel across the great golden plains from any direction and, even from 30 miles out, Devils Tower dominates the landscape. 

The stone sentinel rises 1,267 feet above the Ponderosa pine-lined Belle Fourche River in the northeastern corner of Wyoming. It’s a sore thumb, and utterly exposed, in a place where summer storms rumble across the prairie like the coming apocalypse. Over the Tower, bruise-colored skies crackle with electricity and dump torrents of rain. It’s an apropos place for a monolith with such violent origins. Fifty millions years ago, magma forced its way through thick layers of sedimentary rock here. Time and weather worked to wear away the surrounding rock until the sculpted intrusion stood alone. 

Even though some maps from the early 1800s referred to it as Bear Lodge, when Colonel Richard Dodge led a group of scientists there in 1875, he mistranslated the Native American name for the monolith as “Bad God’s Tower” which then morphed into “Devils Tower.” Because of its historic and scientific significance — and perhaps its peculiar placement among the plains — it was designated as the country’s first national monument in 1906. President Teddy Roosevelt called it “a natural wonder and object of great scientific interest.” Visitation by white people didn’t skyrocket at the monument until 1977, when Richard Dreyfuss built a model of it with mashed potatoes in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Today, the Tower is stamped on the state’s license plates and fields as many as 400,000 visitors annually. Many stare agape at its odd greatness and concur with Spielberg that it would make a fitting place to welcome aliens. 

As is frequently the case with unique and spectacular places, many people — often with wildly different agendas — want a piece of it. This has been true of Devils Tower for some time now. 

According to the National Park Service, at least 23 Plains tribes have a cultural connection to the Tower. It is an epicenter of Native American narratives, celebrations and ceremonies. According to a 1991 ethnographic study of the monument, the Lakota Sioux are one of the six tribes that lived in the area before the existence of the United States. They call the monument “Bear’s Lodge,” because of how they believe it came into being. One day several girls who were playing in the woods were chased by some bears. They crowded onto a rock and begged it to save their lives. The rock then stretched up into the sky and the girls were safe. As the rock grew, the bears’ great claws gauged vertical striations into it. Because of their belief that it is a sacred place of renewal, the Lakota also traditionally held their Sun Dance at Bear’s Lodge. The ritual is performed around the summer solstice and uses sacrifice as a way to reverse damage done to nature and to take away the pain of the universe. Sweat lodge rites, vision quests and the reception of the White Buffalo Calf Pipe, the Lakota’s most-sacred item, which was kept in a secret cave at Bear’s Lodge, also make it a deeply meaningful place. It is no less significant to the Arapaho, Cheyenne, Crow, Kiowa and Eastern Shoshone. 

These traditional uses of the land around the rock were banned in the second half of the 19th Century by the U.S. government. In 1890, the Pine Ridge Reservation was a flashpoint in the battle of expression suppression, where several hundred Sioux (including women and children) who had gathered on the banks of Wounded Knee Creek to perform a ceremonial dance, were killed. Under a so-called “Peace Policy,” Native Americans nationwide were also forced to share their treaty-guaranteed lands with Christian missionaries, who were most likely not there to learn about the Sun Dance.

Since it became public land, picnicking, camping and walking around the Tower are historically and currently the monument’s most popular pastimes. Recreational climbing began there in 1893 (although to call it a “climb” might be generous) when two local ranchers made it to the top with a bunch of ropes and ladders. Their ascent of the Tower drew nearly 3,000 spectators. It wasn’t until 1937 that someone else reached the summit. It took three members of the American Alpine Club, using more modern climbing techniques, five hours to reach the Tower’s coveted plateau. From that moment through 1973, 51 routes were mapped and used by 3,087 climbers to reach the top. In 1981, the number of climbers skyrocketed. In that year, more people scrambled up the rock stump than in all other years combined. During the ’80s, 177 new routes were plotted, and the reputation of Devils Tower as one of the premier crack-climbing destinations in the world was secured. Some who have struggled up its 867-foot-high vertical columns to reach its grassy peak have described it as a transcendent, even religious, experience. In 1993, the numbers reached an all-time high: 5,771 climbs.

It was in that year that Plains tribes got fed up about climbing at Bear’s Lodge. They said the bolts, pitons, slings, anchors and rope desecrated the rock, and often-shouted communications between climbers was disrespectful and disturbed the natural quiet needed to perform sacred acts. Some Native Americans equated climbing at Devils Tower with drilling holes in the walls of a church and yelling during somber services. “People in America have the attitude that they have the God-given right to be entertained, whether it’s climbing a tower or coming and peeking at Native American ceremonies,” said Lakota activist Charlotte Black Elk at the time. Three tribal nations wrote a resolution saying that Bear’s Lodge is vital to their “traditional beliefs and values,” and that they feel obligated to protect it from climbers. The tribes charged that, with each crack climbed, federal land managers were complicit in allowing its destruction.

It was then that the National Park Service got itself wedged between a rock and a holy place. Who had the right to access the Tower and what constituted a legitimate, respectful use of the place was hotly debated and a draft climbing plan was eventually devised. Six alternatives were proposed and ranged from carte-blanche climbing to permanently closing the Tower. “Alternative D” was ultimately chosen: immediately implement a voluntary closure in the month of June to allow Native Americans uninterrupted access to the Lodge during the summer solstice. “The 30-day closure could become mandatory if judged not successful,” said the climbing management plan. While many climbers and tribes treated it as a reasonable — if not entirely desirable —solution, there were some vocal detractors. 

Several climbing outfitters, who make a living guiding tourists up the Tower, sued the Department of the Interior over the voluntary ban. They argued that the one-month closure would be a financial hardship and that it infringed on their experience of the Tower. The legal basis for their case was that encouraging visitors to avoid the Tower during June violated the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause. Their argument rested on the assertion that if the park told people — and put up signs and gave out literature — about Native Americans’ worshipping there, that it was tantamount to religious coercion. The guides said that, under the ruse of educating them about the Tower’s history, schoolchildren on field trips were actually being indoctrinated into Native American religion.

This was clearly an ironic argument for Native Americans who, in addition to traditionally keeping their sacred practices secret, had once been forced to live on reservations with Christian missionaries. Still, the case was seen as an uphill battle for tribes. In the decades prior, they had fought several legal battles regarding access to sacred sites and had lost every one. In the Devils Tower case, tribes argued that the American Indian Religious Freedom Act of 1978 required the U.S. government to keep climbers off Bear’s Lodge. The Act says, “The President shall direct the various federal departments, agencies, and other instrumentalities responsible for administering relevant laws to evaluate their policies and procedures in consultation with native traditional religious leaders in order to determine appropriate changes necessary to protect and preserve Native American religious cultural rights and practices.” Native Americans contended that there was a solid tradition of allowing religious acts on public lands, where recreational activities were also strictly prohibited — playing Frisbee at Arlington National Cemetery during a religious burial wouldn’t be tolerated, neither would dribbling a basketball during a service at Ebenezer Baptist Church, which is managed by the NPS. Furthermore, a 1996 executive order demanded that federal land managers allow ceremonies at sacred spots around the country and guard against compromising the integrity of these places. 

In 1998, the U.S. District Court of Wyoming ruled that the voluntary June ban did not violate the First Amendment. Judge William F. Downes said, “The government has no involvement in the manner of worship that takes place, but only provides an atmosphere more conducive to worship.” It was a landmark victory for Native Americans, which the climbers immediately appealed. The next year, the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the District Court’s ruling, saying that the Devils Tower climbing policy merely intended to do away with barriers to the tribe’s religious practices, and that it should be allowed. 

Since then, the voluntary climbing ban has been largely successful, at least in terms of raw numbers. In June 1999, 163 people climbed the Tower, which made up roughly 4 percent of the climbs for that year. (Compared to 1994, the year before the voluntary ban went into effect, when 1,225 people climbed in June, which made up 22 percent of that year’s total.) 

But, in recent years, as year-round climbing at Devils Tower has declined, the numbers of June climbers is rising. Within the last five years, that number has reached as high as 342 and has made up as much as nearly 10 percent of total annual climbs. What’s caused the marked increase is something of a mystery. The voluntary ban is still communicated in roughly the same way it was a decade ago — visitors applying for climbing permits (which includes everyone wanting to even enter the boulder field at the base of the Tower) are verbally advised of the significance of the area to Native Americans. And they can still read about it in a kiosk in the parking lot.

It may be simply that momentum for the voluntary ban has begun to slow; that, in the short range of human memory, the methodology behind avoiding the Tower in June has become diluted or obscured. Another possibility is that, although it originally intended to deny commercial climbing permits during June, the National Park Service does not. It simply asks outfitters to make their patrons aware of the voluntary ban. Many of the hundreds of people who climb during that month are led by local guides. In 2005, for example, of 283 June climbers, 55 percent were with commercial guides. 

Whatever the reason for an increase in climbing activity in June, for Native Americans, the trend is again becoming a summer hotpoint. The voluntary ban has always been a tenuous agreement and the fact that several hundred people are now flouting the June closure has renewed tension. At only 1,347 acres, the monument is not big enough to overlook the activity of that many climbers during sacred ceremonies. “The 30-day closure could become mandatory if judged not successful,” says the climbing management plan. That harsh language was intended to show that the NPS was seriously committed to preserving the cultural value of the Tower and acknowledging Native American concerns regarding respect. Now, some wonder if the moment has arrived to pursue that course of action. “The time has come for recreationists, profiteers and destructive forces to realize the exploitation of these sacred sites cannot supersede a people’s cultural identity,” says one source close to the issue. “These resources are not only of tribal importance, but of national importance as part of the heritage that makes up this country. The landscape has character and a history that is essential to the identity of the nation as a whole.”

But if Devils Tower opened the door to the idea of a permanent climbing ban at Native American sacred sites, one recent legal victory has blown it off the roof. In March, a decade of legal tussling over Cave Rock on the eastern shore of Lake Tahoe came to an end. For decades, the impressive 300-foot-high basalt boulder has drawn year-round sport climbers who have cut 46 routes up, over and inside the cave. They come often from Carson City, Reno and from northern and eastern California to take on the challenging pitches. Picnickers, hikers and boaters also spend time on the trails, parks and water adjacent to the rock.

For the Washoe tribe, De’ek wadapush, or Standing Gray Rock, has different meaning. It’s a place where their tribal elders connect with powerful spirits. The rock is said to both drain and bestow tremendous power. Cave Rock is so integral to their values that they believe halting traditional interaction with it would risk the well-being of their society. Despite the extent of the human alteration of the site (in 1931, a tunnel was blasted through the base of the boulder for U.S. Highway 50, which was widened to four lanes in 1957), the Washoe were committed to stopping the activity they found most offensive — climbing. The sport, they argued, requires prolonged contact with De’ek wadapush, allowing the absorption of power that wasn’t meant for rock jocks.

The Washoe appealed to the Lake Tahoe Basin unit of the U.S. Forest Service, which manages the site, to tell people to keep their hands off the rock. In 1997, when the USFS responded by suggesting a temporary closure, such as the one in place at Devils Tower, the legal combat began. This time it was climbers who were supportive of a closure compromise, even suggesting the removal of some climbing routes and the prevention of new routes being cut.

The Washoe summarily rejected all proposals; they wanted all climbers banned from the rock permanently. The climbing community argued, as it did in the Devils Tower case, that a climbing ban would undermine the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. By allowing the Washoe to practice their religion at Cave Rock in favor of climbing, they argued, the USFS was defying the Constitution. Whether or not that logic would have won over the court in this case wouldn’t be tested. Ultimately, the government chose to dodge the religion argument entirely by saying instead that climbing diminished the historical value of Cave Rock and threatened its candidacy on the National Register of Historic Places. (A similar argument could be made to support the closure of Devils Tower). 

In March, Lake Tahoe Forest Supervisor Terri Marceron signed the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals final order to stop climbing at Cave Rock (other recreational activities like fishing and picnicking will continue). For climbers, the loss is tremendous. Not only have they been denied access to a unique and popular spot but the legal decision has set a landmark. Climbing advocates fear that the Cave Rock closure sets a precedent to be followed in places where tribes want to limit access, for religious, cultural or historic reasons. There are several such cases already brewing throughout the West. Hueco Tanks State Historic Site in Texas, where the climbing closures are racking up, is one such example. In the last few days of 2007, the park’s popular Mushroom Boulder was fenced off in order to protect Native American archeological resources from the “significant changes” wrought by climbers. 

The Washoe have been elated by the closure of Cave Rock to climbers. Other tribes and activists around the country have been greatly encouraged that, for the first time in history, both legal and public sentiment seem to be on their side. In 2005, a survey asked visitors to Devils Tower: “In your opinion, what is the national significance of the park?” Four out of five responses included the importance of the place to Native Americans. The comments included statements like, “The national significance of Devils Tower is that it is a Native American sacred site and of historical value. It also has geological significance as an unusual land formation.” Considering that, in an average year, only one percent of park patrons are climbers, a renewed fight to ban climbing there could end differently than it did more than a decade ago.

This month (June), a sculpture will be unveiled at Bear’s Lodge/Devils Tower. “Circle of Sacred Smoke” evokes the tale of the White Buffalo Calf Woman who brings the most revered pipe to the Native Americans of the Plains to initiate sacred rituals. The pipe also holds a place in the white man’s memory. In 1875, General George Custer swore by it, somewhat melodramatically, stating that he would cease fighting Native Americans. “He who swears by the pipe and breaks oaths, comes to destruction, and his whole family dies, or sickness comes upon them,” he said. Whether or not anyone will make such pledges about future skirmishes at Devils Tower remains to be seen.

The Park Service says the sculpture will both celebrate tribal uses of the monument and “will show partnership among peoples of the world.” At this spellbinding Tower, where clouds of controversy seem to gather naturally, it is a lofty goal. The “Calf Woman” is located off-the-beaten track, in a place where people—whose presence seems fleeting in the shadow of the ancient behemoth—can watch summer storms descend upon the great rock and consider its future. There they can observe, as M. Scott Momaday put it in The Way to Rainy Mountain, “There are things in nature that engender an awful quiet in the heart of man; Devil’s Tower is one of them.” 

MG