0:00 The belemnite beside the trail
2:09 The tower's official geology
5:51 Rubble and the missing eruption
9:47 Testing the diatreme hypothesis
13:21 The buried Indigenous occupation
16:11 Bear Lodge and sacred histories
24:53 Two ages and disputed claims
29:12 The mine, the ground, and what remains open

A belemnite in the dirt beside Devil's Tower opens a much stranger story than the sign tells. I follow that small piece of stone into the geology, archaeology, and contested history beneath one of Wyoming's most recognizable landmarks.

I examine the rubble around the tower, the diatreme volcano hypothesis, the evidence for an ancient shallow sea, and the buried Indigenous occupation revealed by ground-penetrating radar. I also trace the names Bear Lodge and Devil's Tower through oral histories, maps, federal policy, and ongoing debates.

Along the way, I compare competing ages for the tower, explain what remains unresolved, and look at the proposed rare earth mine in the Bear Lodge Mountains. The ground, the paperwork, and the stories do not all say the same thing.