Interesting to see that today is the anniversary of Devil's Tower as a national monument. Seems like it is mostly an attraction for rock climbers, judging from the NPS site. I have this stamp in my collection.
It is hard not to think of Nebraska without thinking of its greatest writer. Here is a marvelous piece by Capote, Remembering Willa Cather . I remember seeing a stage production of O Pioneers! and being deeply moved by its raw emotions. I had read My Antonia before, and soon found myself hooked, like Capote was by the simple elegance of her prose and the way she was able to evoke so many feelings through her characters. Much of it came from the fact that she had lived those experiences herself. Her father dragged the family from Virginia to Nebraska in 1883, when it was still a young state, settling in the town of Red Cloud. named after one of the great Oglala chiefs. Red Cloud was still alive at the time, living on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, in the aftermath of the "Great Sioux Wars" of 1876-77. I don't know whether Cather took any interest in the famous chief, although it is hard to imagine not. Upon his death in 1909, he was eulogi
Beautiful stamp.
ReplyDeleteBrinkley said that while TR never visited Devils Tower he may have seen it since he visited Gillette and another Wyoming town Brinkley lists. I've driven through Gillette many times and have never seen the Tower -- I'm wondering if this is another one of Brinkley's weird assumptions or if it's really that big and I just wasn't looking for it. I'll have to check it out next time....
I imagine tourism peaked back in the late 70s when Spielberg made Devil's Tower the centerpiece of his movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
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