Devils Tower
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40 free Devils Tower trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Devils Tower is one of the most recognizable landmarks in the American West: a lone column of rock that soars above the grasslands and forests around it. It was the first national monument in the United States, it is sacred to more than twenty tribes, and it has drawn scientists, daredevils and filmmakers for well over a century. This quiz turns the best Devils Tower fun facts into questions: how the rock formed and why it looks the way it does, the oral histories that explain its shape, the early settlers who first reached the top, the stunt that left a man stuck on the summit, and the science-fiction classic that made it a household image. It suits road trippers planning a visit, students and teachers, and anyone curious about America's protected places. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you will leave knowing far more about the rock than its silhouette.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which science-fiction film made Devils Tower famous as the landing site of an alien mothership?
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
Close Encounters of the Third Kind filmed on location at the rock in 1976, and so many fans came afterwards that visits to the monument jumped.
Q 02Which US president made Devils Tower the country's first national monument with a proclamation in 1906?
Theodore Roosevelt
Theodore Roosevelt signed the proclamation only three months after Congress gave presidents the power to protect landmarks of scientific interest.
Q 03How did stuntman George Hopkins reach the summit of Devils Tower in 1941, before getting stranded there for six days?
By parachute
By parachute, as a publicity stunt: he landed on target, but the rope dropped for his descent fell out of reach and climbers had to fetch him.
Q 04In a famous 1977 film scene, what food does Roy Neary absentmindedly shape into Devils Tower at dinner?
Mashed potatoes
Mashed potatoes become an early model of the rock that haunts his visions, before he hauls dirt and bricks indoors to build a huge one.
Q 05The summit of Devils Tower covers about one and a half acres, roughly the size of which playing area?
A football field
A football field is the rangers' own comparison for the 180-by-300-foot top, a rocky dome where grasses and cactus grow.
Q 06In several Native American traditions, what are the long vertical grooves on the sides of Devils Tower said to be?
Claw marks
Claw marks is the answer in Kiowa and Crow accounts alike: the rock rose to lift children out of reach, and the animals chasing them raked its sides.
Q 07Which piece of punctuation is officially left out of the name Devils Tower on maps and signs?
An apostrophe
An apostrophe was there when an 1875 Army expedition coined Devil's Tower, but the US naming standard for places drops the possessive.
Q 08What did ranchers William Rogers and Willard Ripley build in 1893 to make the first recorded climb of Devils Tower?
A wooden ladder
A wooden ladder of pegs hammered into one long crack carried them 350 feet up, and part of it, restored in 1972, still clings to the rock.
Q 09Devils Tower rises above the plains in the northeastern corner of which US state?
Wyoming
Wyoming keeps the rock in its far northeast, where it stands 1,267 feet above the valley below and shows up from the highway outside the park.
Q 10In one Kiowa telling, seven girls lifted into the sky from Devils Tower became which cluster of stars?
The Pleiades
The Pleiades pass right over the rock on winter nights, as a Kiowa soldier at Fort Sill pointed out when he told the story in 1897.
Q 11The Lakota call Devils Tower Mato Tipila, a name that translates into English as what?
Bear Lodge
Bear Lodge was the label on the earliest official maps, and in 2014 a Lakota spiritual leader asked the federal names board to bring it back.
Q 12Which director filmed scenes for his 1977 alien-contact blockbuster on location at Devils Tower?
Steven Spielberg
Steven Spielberg could film at the rock for only a few hours each evening, because his scenes there needed the brief light of dusk.
Q 13During which month are climbers asked to stay off Devils Tower voluntarily, out of respect for tribal ceremonies?
June
June is when many tribal ceremonies take place, and the voluntary closure, a compromise written into a 1995 plan, cuts the number of climbs sharply.
Q 21What did ranchers planning the first climb of Devils Tower try to fly over the summit to carry up a rope?
A kite
A kite got stuck in a crack instead, and while tugging it free the men saw that the crack seemed to run from base to top: their route.
Q 22Dressed as which patriotic figure did rancher William Rogers make his public climb of Devils Tower in 1893?
Uncle Sam
Uncle Sam was his outfit, and by noon he stood on the summit with an American flag snapping in the stiff wind.
Q 23Which company offered one of its aircraft to rescue George Hopkins from the top of Devils Tower in 1941?
Goodyear
Goodyear offered a blimp and the Navy a helicopter, but in the end eight climbers simply went up the rock and brought him back.
Q 14Devils Tower formed underground; which natural process later brought it into view over millions of years?
Erosion
Erosion did it: the molten rock cooled underground about 50 million years ago, and water later carried off the softer rock around it.
Q 15Cooling molten rock, as at Devils Tower, typically cracks into columns of which shape when seen end-on?
Hexagons
Hexagons are the classic pattern, though the huge columns here are less regular, and many have five sides instead of six.
Q 16Devils Tower was America's first national monument; which first national park lies in the same state?
Yellowstone
Yellowstone was protected in 1872, a generation earlier, and the first outsiders known to see the rock were an 1859 expedition heading there.
Q 17Which famous coastal landmark is built from the same sort of naturally cracked rock columns as Devils Tower?
Giant's Causeway
Giant's Causeway in Northern Ireland has some 40,000 such columns, but none match the ones here, which rangers call the largest in the world.
Q 18Which burrowing animals fill a 40-acre colony of about 600 residents beside the road into Devils Tower?
Prairie dogs
Prairie dogs clip the plants in their town down to a few inches, so that nothing can creep up on them unseen.
Q 19On which holiday in 1893 did rancher William Rogers climb Devils Tower in front of a large crowd of spectators?
Fourth of July
Fourth of July handbills promised a day better spent at the rock than at the World's Fair, and some families rode three days by wagon to watch.
Q 20Devils Tower stands at the northwestern edge of which mountain region, better known for Mount Rushmore?
Black Hills
Black Hills uplift some 50 to 60 million years ago came as molten rock welled up here, and a 500-mile band of red cliffs still circles the whole region.
Q 24Which actor played Roy Neary, the lineman haunted by visions of Devils Tower in a 1977 alien film?
Richard Dreyfuss
Richard Dreyfuss played the obsessed lineman in the same year he made The Goodbye Girl, the comedy that won him the Oscar for best actor.
Q 25In a 1977 alien film, which fake disaster does the Army announce to clear people from around Devils Tower?
A nerve gas spill
A nerve gas spill from a train wreck is the cover story, planted in the news so the military can prepare a secret landing site.
Q 26After reaching the top of Devils Tower in 1893, Willard Ripley said he found only a little soil and what?
Sagebrush
Sagebrush and soil made a flat report from the first person on record to stand up there, a feat many had thought impossible.
Q 27The rock of Devils Tower takes the first part of its geological name from which unusual property?
It rings when hit
It rings when hit: a small slab gives a clear metallic note, and the name comes from the Greek for sounding stone.
Q 28Which 1906 law, signed months before Devils Tower was protected, lets presidents proclaim national monuments?
Antiquities Act
Antiquities Act powers were written with ancient ruins in mind, yet their first use went to a rock, protected for its scientific value.
Q 29Some climbing routes on Devils Tower are shut each spring to protect the cliff nests of which birds?
Falcons
Falcons nest on the columns every spring, so rangers shut the nearby routes until the chicks have fledged.
Q 30During which part of an outing on Devils Tower have most climbing accidents and deaths happened?
The rappel
The rappel is the dangerous part, when climbers must thread their ropes through fixed anchors three or four times to reach the ground.