Belle Forche, SD to Devil's Tower, MT to Broadus, MT

If you spend the night in Belle Fourche South Dakota and you are headed West, it's a pretty good bet that you are on your way to the Devil's Tower National Monument. If you're not, you should be. And why wouldn'y you want to swing by such an amazing sight? The Devil's Tower was a magma plug in a volcano long, long ago and the volcano eroded away. The magma cooled at a slow rate and formed the giant phonolite porphyritic crystal-like columns that make up the formation. Yowza, that's a mouthful... and that is more than a few years worth of erosion!

Anyhow, the Devil's Tower is, of course, not the destination, the destination is the trip itself. so keep your eyes open. The drive to the monument is through wide open land. with rough hills and weathered homesteads.

Old Windmill

An old, dysfunctional windmill is always worth a second look. Stop the car & look around.

Windmills, old and new

Two windmill, one newer, give service to a cabin that has seen better days by far.

Devils Tower

Eventually you will come upon the tower itself, rising in the distance. As you get closer you can see the Iron-rich, red hills and cliffs that surround it.

all about the bunnies

Of course what they don't tell you is that it's all about the bunnies. The Devil's Tower is home to a family of fierce bunnies that have been known to climb up the tower to protect it from hoodlums that might try to deface the monument. ... Why is it looking at me like that?

Missouri Buttes

Those two lumps off to the left (West) of the Devil's Tower are the Missouri Buttes. What is interesting is that they are of the same material as the Devils Tower and date to the same period (40.5 million years). They actually are taller than the Devil's Tower by a few hundred feet. Now imagine... if these formations were from the same volcano and they are 3.5 miles away.... This was a pretty good-sized volcano. Just to put it into perspective, Yellowstone is a youngster. the Volcano that exploded to make the current Yellowstone caldera did so a mere 640,000 years ago. The theorized magma plume that forms the heat source for Yellowstone has moved across the bottom of Idaho for a few million years, only 16 millions of years ago the Yellowstone plume was located at the border or Oregon & Nevada. Why are they called the Missouri Buttes? Well. the Little Missouri river is about 15 miles further to the NorthWest.

Maybe some old boy put up these shacks to draw in tourist trade during the summer months. Maybe they are there just to store his wheelbarrow, but years of weather have burnt them nicely.

Yep, this ol' cabin... it's a big one...The fellow who built this must've been quite successful & had a large family.

Sideway rocks

Along this part of the drive there were a lot of these stratified rocks tilting on their sides. lovely as they are, they have more a sense of being jumbled and tumbled than offing of a contiguous shelf

Wyoming Schoolhouse

Way out in the middle of nowhere on the wide open plains of America you find these tiny school houses. Yes, it looks like the students of these institutions cold honestly claim to walk \"five miles in the snow\" to attend class.

Montana Schoolhouse

Fifteen miles later another school house equally isolated. Lovely view though.


Coffee and Pie
To Rapid City, South Dakota
Sep 23, 2006
Rapid City, South Dakota is an interesting town. While they advertise themselves as the Gateway to the Black hills and Mount Rushmore, they strive to have enough attiactions in the town itself to keep you lingering there for a few days.
Mt Rushmore to Bell Fourche, SD
Sep 24, 2006
You know this picture. It has been taken millions of times through millions of cameras.
  Belle Forche, SD to Devil's Tower, MT to Broadus, MT
Broadus, MT to Cohagen, MT
Sep 26, 2006
When you wake up early and get moving, you get to see some ineresting mornings. This day was no exception.
Hell Creek, MT
Sep 27, 2006
Nice little town, Cohagen. I took the day to go out into the Hell Creek area to get caught up on some writing.
Glasgow, Montana
Sep 28, 2006
Driving across Montana you get to experience a beautiful vastness. Standing on the edge of this ball. At night you feel you can reach up & grab a couple of stars & plop them in your coffee to keep it warm.
  Contact
  About Us
- - - - -
Keywords in This Article

Wyoming
National Monument
Devils Tower

Unless otherwise credited, all content on TheYodel.com is
Copyright © 1999 - 2024 Grant Groberg
All rights reserved.
yup