national monument

Shortly after Congress gave him the power to do so, President Theodore Roosevelt in 1906 created the nation’s first national monument at Devils Tower. Wyoming’s lone congressman, Frank Mondell, fearing federal overreach and always in favor of developing, not protecting, public land was distinctly unenthusiastic about the move.

Devils Tower, a basalt column rising 1,267 feet above the nearby Belle Fourche River, was the nation’s first National Monument and remains important to tourists and the many tribes that hold it sacred.