Devils Tower: Stories in Stone

Devils Tower: Stories in Stone

By Mary Alice Gunderson

Devils Tower National Monument, the first site designated a national monument in 1906 has drawn to it fascinating people and spawned stories of mythic proportion.

This is the only comprehensive history of the awesome rock tower and the people who have been drawn to it. Sitting Bull, Custer, photographer/artist team Jackson and Moran, climbers, adventures, eccentrics—they’re all here!

Chapters include Indian accounts of the landmark’s origin, geology, historic exploration, classic climbs, and media events.

• 0-931271-09-6 • trade paper • index • 144 pp • photos • $12.95 ORDER NOW

Devils Tower: Stories in Stone

By Mary Alice Gunderson

“As we experience and contemplate Devils Tower—still, even in the modern age, ‘an unfailing object of wonder’—each of us must create for it our own private meaning. By bringing together in these pages the stories of the native peoples and newcomers alike, Mary Alice Gunderson has provided a richness of historical depth and cultural diversity that helps us shape our perception of the grandeur of the place, situating personal experience in the perspective of those who came here before us. In that sense too, Devils Tower is a powerful link, not only between earth and sky, but between present and past."
•• Raymond J. Demallie, Professor of Anthropology, Indiana University

Mary Alice Gunderson

Mary Alice Gunderson published more than one hundred poems, stories, articles, and essays in a wide range of publications, including South Dakota Review, InterMountain Woman, Point Riders Press Anthology of Great Plains Poetry, Poets West: Contemporary Poems from Eleven Western States, and the Houghton Mifflin anthologies Woven on the Wind and Leaning into the Wind. She edited anthologies for Casper College Literary Weekends, Wyoming Arts Council, Wyoming Council for the Humanities, and is also editor of LandMarked: Collected Stories of Peggy Simson Curry.

She was the recipient of both the Wyoming Art's Council's Individual Artist Grant and a WAC Literature Fellowship, a Ucross Foundation Fellowship, and a writing and research grant from the Wyoming Council on the Humanities. Her writing and photographs have received commendations from the Wyoming State Historical Society and National Federation of Press Women.

She taught elementary school, conducted Writing in the Schools residencies, and most recently, taught Developmental English and Creative Writing at Casper College.