In Wyoming, Devils Tower dominates the landscape with flanks cut into columns. Their regularity seems almost architectural. Yet, no one has piled these pillars. The rock comes from a cooled magma, and its fractures tell part of the passage from hot matter to solid stone.
As it cools, the mass contracts. Constraints favor cracks that organize the rock into prisms. This phenomenon is often associated with hexagons, but not all Devils Tower columns follow a perfect model: some have five sides. Natural drawing retains irregularities.
Erosion then removed the surrounding rocks and made the tower visible. However, not all the details of his training are agreed: several models explain differently the installation of magma and its context. The silhouette is famous, the mechanism of the columns well identified, but the complete biography of this geological monument is still not reduced to a single indisputable image.
What we know
Do not present a precise hypothesis of ancient volcano as a unanimous conclusion.
To go to the source
References consulted on September 21, 2026. Linked pages may be in another language.
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