Photo of the Day

If this photo looks familiar, it may be because you've seen it in the movie Close Encounter of the Third Kind, or on stamps commemorating America's National Parks and National Monuments. Devils Tower National Monument in Wyoming was the first declared national monument and it was not without controversy then, or now. Native Americans who lived in the area never called it Devils Tower, preferring to generally call it Bear Lodge. Early American explorers referred to it as Bear Lodge as well, but one such explorer decided to call it Devils Tower, claiming that some unidentified Indian tribe called it that.

That's the name that stuck.

Still, some would like to see the name changed, particularly because Native Americans hold the mountain sacred and regularly make visits there to make offerings to their gods.