How a ‘Natural Wonder’ Became the First National Monument

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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Devils Tower, however, would become something else entirely.
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.”