President Theodore Roosevelt declared Devil's Tower in Wyoming as the first national monument, in 1906. For many Americans, their first view of this strange and mystical rock formation came via Steven Spielberg's science fiction film, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, in 1977. However, the monument has a much older cultural history and has been known to Native Americans for hundreds of years as Mateo Tepee (meaning Grizzly Bear Lodge). The name Devil's Tower originated in 1875 during an expedition led by Col. Richard Irving Dodge, when his interpreter misinterpreted the Indian name to mean Bad God's Tower. This was later shortened to Devil's Tower.
