Northeastern Belle

Sunbeams break through the clouds over the Belle Fourche River valley in northeastern Wyoming on the evening of August 14, 1978. This view looks south from near Devil's Tower National Monument. Devil's Tower, America's oldest national monument (proclaimed as such by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1906), was a two-day stop on a two-week vacation trip out west by a group of my friends and me. The unique monument, which rises 1,267 feet above the Belle Fourche valley, is of volcanic origin and was prominently showcased in the 1977 film Close Encounters of the Third Kind.