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LiveCam at
Zion National Park . Utah
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Towers of the Virgin
About This Camera
LiveCam at
Zion National Park . Utah
Oct
3
We’ve been staying near here for the last three days. It’s no wonder the “Devils Tower” was a special location in the eyes of the people who lived here. For miles you can see the tower looming over the landscape. The tower began underground about 50 million years ago as molten magma forced into sedimentary rocks above it. It cooled underground, contracted and fractured into columns. Over time the ground around it eroded leaving the tower of today 867 feet above it’s base and 1267 feet above the river. The top of the tower is 1.5 acres of rock.
Click on these images – they’re much larger
Devils Tower as seen from a distance. It’s easy to understand why this was a sacred site for several Indian nations of the Great Plains. In 1906 President Theodore Roosevelt proclaimed Devils Tower the first national monument un the new Antiquities Act. His action made Wyoming the home of both our first national park – Yellowstone in 1872 – and our first national monument.
Steven Spielberg made the site even more famous by using it as a pivotal location for his film “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”.
