Tuesday, September 24, 2013

September 24, 2013.. Today we drove from Sundance, WY to Deadwood, SD. We took a side trip to Devil’s Tower National Monument. This was about 28 miles from Sundance. While we were at Devil’s Tower, we walked the 1.3 miles trail around the base. The height of Devil’s Tower is 865 feet tall. There were rock climbers going up the side of the tower. It appears it is a popular destination for some rock climbers. It is amazing they can go straight up the vertical wall of the tower.

We stopped by the Vore Buffalo Jump. If you are not familiar with a buffalo jump, I will not try to explain it but quote what I found online on Wikipedia.
The Vore Buffalo Jump is an archeological site in Crook County, Wyoming. A sinkhole, formed where gypsum soil was eroded, leaving a steep-sided pit about 40 feet (12 m) deep and 200 feet (61 m) in diameter. Native American hunters could stampede bison in the direction of the pit, which was deep enough to kill or disable the animals that were driven into it. The location is one of a number of buffalo jump sites in the north central United States and southern Canada. The Vore site was used as a kill site and butchering site from about 1500 AD to about 1800 AD. Archeological investigations in the 1970s uncovered bones and projectile points to a depth of 15 feet (4.6 m). About ten tons of bones were removed from the site. About five percent of the site has been excavated, and the pit is estimated to contain the remains of 20,000 buffalo.
The Vore Buffalo Jump Site is the most important archaeological site of its kind in the world. 

The site was closed for the season so we could not go to the indoor exhibits but we did get to see the actual jump.

Tomorrow we are going to go in town to Deadwood before we leave the area.
Devil's Tower National Monument
We could see the Tower and the GPS was showing it was still 15 miles before we would get there
There were climbers going up the side of the tower. I zoomed in to get a photo of them.
Without the camera lens zoomed in, this what it looked like where the climbers where. They are there somewhere.
Some prairie dogs were near the road going to Devil's Tower. We stopped and watched them for awhile. 
This is Vore Buffalo Jump. The building in the bottom is an exhibit area where results of the excavations are shown.  









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