Sipping the strong coffee, I wonder at the long procession of vanished Indian societies that camped and hunted here periodically through the centuries. These ancient peoples devised various stories to explain such an unusual landmark. And yet what science now says about the creation of Devils Tower would have seemed to those tribes as fantastic as their legends of a gargantuan bear gouging the rock seem to us today. Minor uncertainties remain, but geologists have pieced together a rough picture of the Tower’s probable origin. Some 60 million years ago, great Earth stresses began to deform the crust of the continent, resulting in the uplifting of the Rocky Mountains and Great Plains region. As the surface rock layers began to crumple and fault, magma from deep inside the Earth welled up into many of the resulting gaps and fissures. In many places on the continent, spectacular volcanoes formed, erupting with explosive force. As the Rockies were being created, the climate of the continent’s interior began to change. The long reign of the dinosaurs that had presided over a stable, tropical landscape was coming to an end. The climate was gradually becoming cooler and drier. Doubtless the immense volumes of volcanic ash ejected into the atmosphere prevented a percentage of solar heat from reaching the Earth. Certainly the rise of the Rocky Mountains to the west influenced the old weather patterns. As the mountain blocks rose higher, they intercepted the warm, moist winds that blew inland from the Pacific. With the air masses rising ever higher, more and more of the moisture that had watered the extensive inland Cretaceous forests and swamplands was prevented from reaching what we know today as the Great Plains. Steadily the forests retreated eastward as the “rain shadow” cast by the mountains extended eastward, shutting off the moist, warm Pacific winds. No longer moderated by these winds, the mid-continent was increasingly opened to seasonal invasions of northern arctic air. Newer ecosystems, such as deserts and grasslands, slowly evolved to replace the lush forests and swamps that had for so long sustained the dinosaurs. Just as drought, fire, and temperature extremes began to alter the old order in the plant kingdom, so did the more adaptable mammals and birds begin to replace reptiles as dominant animal forms. [Illustration: _Both the Kiowa and Cheyenne Indians held similar legends on the origin of the Tower. The story goes that tribal members were surprised by a gigantic bear, and their incantations caused a low, flat rock to rise, lifting them above the reach of the bear. The massive beast then gouged huge vertical marks into the rock as it attempted to reach the people. Finally, the Indians were able to kill the bear._]