Frommer's National Parks of the American West - Don Laine [148]
Warning: The washboard dirt road between the Mid Hills and Hole-in-the-Wall campgrounds might be too jarring for many two-wheel-drive passenger cars.
The sites at Providence Mountain State Recreation Area (☎ 760/928-2586) are adjacent to the Mitchell Caverns Visitor Center. There are only six first-come, first-served sites, for $12 per
night. You'll find flush toilets, drinking water, public telephones, and fire grates.
A highlight of the East Mojave is camping in the open desert all by your lonesome; at press time, backcountry camping was fairly unregulated, requiring no registration. Campfires outside of designated fire grates are prohibited; backcountry campers need to pack out all trash, and take care not to set up in a gully or dry wash subject to flash flooding. It's advisable to contact an information center before establishing camp. And please respect private lands.
In addition to the campgrounds in the preserve, 30 acres of camping space are available in a privately owned campground in Nipton, in the open desert beyond the town's historic B&B inn (double rates are about $70, hot breakfast included). Other amenities include hot tubs, showers, drinking water, a Wi-Fi network, a restaurant (great barbecue and burgers), two cabin tents ($60 per night, breakfast included), and four RV hookups ($30). For information, call ☎ 760/856-2335 or visit www.nipton.com.
14
DEVILS TOWER NATIONAL MONUMENT
by Eric Peterson
RISING 1,267 FEET ABOVE THE BELLE FOURCHE RIVER, THE STONE stump of Devils Tower greets visitors miles before they arrive. Established in 1906 by Pres. Theodore Roosevelt as the country's first national monument, Devils Tower is off the beaten path in extreme northeast Wyoming, but it's well worth the trip.
Col. Richard I. Dodge, who commanded a military escort for a U.S. Geological Survey party that visited the Black Hills in 1875, is credited with giving the formation its name. In his book The Black Hills, written the year after his journey, Dodge described Devils Tower as "one of the most remarkable peaks in this or any other country."
The steep-sided mass of igneous rock rises abruptly from the grasslands and pine forests, and it remains one of the Black Hills' most conspicuous geologic features. Movie buffs will recognize the tower as the landing site of an alien spaceship in Steven Spielberg's 1977 Oscar-winning film Close Encounters of the Third Kind, starring Richard Dreyfuss, François Truffaut, and Teri Garr.
Geology. Although the 50-million-year-old tower is composed of hard igneous rock, much of the other exposed rock within the 1,347-acre monument is made of soft sediments from the warm shallow seas of the Mesozoic era. These colorful bands of rock encircling the igneous core include layers of sandstone, shale, mudstone, siltstone, gypsum, and limestone.
The story of Devils Tower's geology is but one chapter in the history of the Black Hills. Even now, after extensive study and detailed geologic mapping, modern scientists are still debating the origins of Devils Tower. Of the several theories on the formation of the tower, the most popular suggests that it is the result of volcanic activity in the early Tertiary period, some 50 million years ago. Scientists believe that a mass of molten rock forced its way up from below the surface of the earth, forming an inverted, cone-shaped structure beneath layers of sedimentary rock in what is now northeastern Wyoming. As
the molten rock slowly cooled, it cracked and fractured, creating one of the most striking features of the monument, its polygonal columns. Most of the columns are five-sided, and others are four- or six-sided. The largest columns measure 15 to 20 feet in diameter at their base and gradually taper upward to about 10 feet in diameter at the summit.
Over