Monument marks 100th anniversary

DEVILS TOWERS NATIONAL MONUMENT, Wyo. – James and Belinda Livingston didn’t plan to come here as part of their spring vacation. The Chicago couple didn’t even know it existed until someone they met on their travels suggested they take the drive to remote, northeast Wyoming to check it out.

As they paused along the Tower Trail and watched three climbers try their luck on the 867-foot rock column, they said they were glad they came.

“This is amazing,” Belinda Livingston said.

Her husband added: “I think it’s one of the wonders of the world.”

It’s accidental tourists – people within driving distance, and the merely curious – that state tourism officials want to see at Devils Tower in droves this summer as America’s first national monument marks its 100th anniversary.

Diane Shober, director of Wyoming Travel and Tourism, said it’s all about seeing people connect to the park.

For some, that might entail seeing Devils Tower for the first time; for others, simply taking in the monument – walking on the seven miles of trails, having a picnic – with their kids or grandkids.

The state tourism office plans to spend $75,000 advertising the summer-long centennial celebration, using TV, radio, newspapers, magazines and a billboard along Interstate 90 to catch travelers’ attention.

Devils Tower also figures prominently into the agency’s overall, $3 million summer ad campaign and is featured on the new state highway map, Shober said.

“If you’re coming for the first time, we’d say, ‘This is a place you’d want to see,’ ” she said. “This isn’t manmade; it’s not commercialized. It’s very, very authentic, and real.”

Every year, about 400,000 people visit Devils Tower. The visually jarring monolith that rises above the gentle hills, valley farmland and nearby prairie dog town is sacred to many American Indians and is a mecca of sorts to climbers.

That’s a fraction of the visitors that tour Yellowstone National Park. But it’s still sufficient to create congestion, noise and headaches for park managers.

Within the next five to six years, park officials hope to have a replacement visitor center built, or well under way, near the monument entrance station – about three miles below the tower and the current visitor center, which was built in the 1930s to accommodate about 20,000 visitors a year, acting monument Superintendent Jeannine McElveen said.

A goal is limiting traffic and noise near the tower, spreading visitors between the new learning center and trails that wind around or near the tower, McElveen said.

“I think the visitor experience is less for the congestion at the base of the tower,” she said.

The most popular trail, Tower Trail, winds around the massive boulder field at the tower base.

Indians leave prayer cloths in the trees along it; climbers use it as a starting point for the more than 220 routes up Devils Tower.

Other tourists use it to stretch their legs, get impressive camera angles or read about the tower’s history and significance on colorful exhibits.

Officials envision a natural plaza eventually replacing the asphalt parking area just below the tower, and a mass-transit system shuttling tourists between the tower, visitor center and existing shops near the park entrance. But any such changes are still years off, McElveen said.

In the meantime, park managers are preparing for a busy summer, aware that weather is always a wild card. Chief Ranger Scott Brown said the thunderstorm season could scare some visitors away from the monument, which is a good hour from any city of size.

The weather was nearly perfect on a recent spring day when Horacio Rosario, of Atlanta, hung out on a bench, mesmerized by the climbers.

He, too, did not anticipate being here. But since he and his traveling companions were in nearby South Dakota to see Mount Rushmore and other sites, they figured, why not?

“I have never been so far West,” he said. “Wow. It’s a completely different world.”