Devils Tower

Devils Tower, the fluted stone column rising out of the pine forest in northeastern Wyoming. In Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) it is the shape Roy Neary cannot stop sculpting, first in mashed potatoes and then in clay and dirt, and the place the film's climax plays out after dark. Seen in person it is even stranger than on screen, and it was the first natural formation in the country declared a national monument, in 1906. Stay for dusk, the hour the crew filmed in, when the columns glow and the sky takes over.