Part 1 Welcome to Devils Tower 4 Mateo Tepee 9 Part 2 Taking a Closer Look 20 _By Greg Beaumont_ A Day at Devils Tower 22 Prairie Dogs: A Tight-Knit Society 48 Part 3 Guide and Adviser 66 Regional Map 68 Visiting the Park 69 Park Regulations 71 Climbing the Tower 72 Nearby National Parks 74 Not So Nearby National Parks 76 Armchair Explorations 78 Index 79 1 Welcome to Devils Tower [Illustration: _Rising nearly straight up from the plains, Devils Tower accentuates the differences in the scale of life. The snow-dusted, volcanic sentinel dwarfs the forest at its base._] [Illustration: _Smaller still, and requiring our closer look in different seasons, are butterflies, flowers, and, below, pine seedlings._] [Illustration: Pine seedlings.] Mateo Tepee Devils Tower rises dramatically and abruptly out of the Black Hills above the Belle Fourche River in northeastern Wyoming. These Black Hills are an island in the Great Plains, the heart of the American West. The aura of this West and of its history, folklore, and legend is a fondly nurtured American treasure. Never just The West, it is rather the Scenic West, or the Old West, or the True West, and of course the Wild West. Each epithet suggests that no one can pay homage to the region without resorting to its curious mixture of the known and the unknown, of truth and myth. Here is a land of blue skies, magnificent rock formations, and a clear, dry atmosphere that easily confuses and distorts your sense of distance. It is a land of mountain views, long probing rivers, deserts, and high plains and space—great unfathomable oceans of space. The West is the archetypal outdoors whose recreation possibilities forever grip the modern imagination. A trip to Devils Tower National Monument is a trip to Wyoming, a state fully proud of its Western traditions. Car license plates display the bucking bronco to advertise “the land of the cowboy,” a motif repeated in many public places and widely observed in the casual manner of its people.