IT DID, HOWEVER, occur to the federal government. In 1978, Congress passed the American Indian Religious Freedom Act. AIRFA acknowledged previous infringements on the rights of Native Americans to practice their religions and visit their sacred sites, stating, "It shall be the policy of the United States to protect and preserve for American Indians their inherent right to freedom to believe, express, and exercise the traditional religions."

Sites sacred to Native Americans exist all over the nation, but only a few—such as Shiprock, a 1,969-foot spire on the Navajo Reservation in New Mexico, and Spider Rock, in Arizona's Canyon de Chelly National Park, also on Navajo land—were off-limits to climbers. With AIRFA, government agencies were required to review their policies in consultation with Native American leaders. This mandate eventually forced Devils Tower National Monument to revise its management plan.

"Some Native Americans wanted climbing completely banned, and some climbers were offended by certain Native American rituals," says Deborah Liggett, Tower superintendent from 1994 through '97. "Devils Tower was unique, in that it was the only park in the system that had recreational use in conflict with cultural use."

In 1994 Liggett joined a work group that included local Native Americans and representatives from two Native American advocacy groups, local climbers, and representatives from the Access Fund and the Sierra Club. Because so many of the Native American rituals—vision quests, sweat lodges, sun dances, the pipe ceremony, and other tribal and personal rites—are performed around the summer solstice, the Park Service proposed banning climbing each June. Hundreds of Indians make their pilgrimage to Devils Tower every year at this time. Ironically, this offer was rejected by the Native American elders. Instead, they asked that the Park Service develop, and educate visitors about, a voluntary climbing closure for that month.

"The elders felt that making it voluntary would get climbers to think about their behavior," says Liggett, who instituted this request as part of the new climbing guidelines issued in the spring of 1995. That first year, 84 percent of climbers chose not to climb in the month of June.

Pat and I climbed the Tower in May and stayed inside the monument at the Devils Tower Lodge, a homey place owned and operated by Frank Sanders. Sanders, a Washington, D.C., transplant, is an active climber who helped put up dozens of new routes on the Tower in the seventies. He bought the lodge in '99 and has been running it and guiding on the Tower ever since.

Devils Tower fills the picture window in the lodge's dining room, and every night at dinner guests hold hands and are encouraged to share what they're grateful for. Sanders, seated at the head of the table with his long silver hair, Fu Manchu mustache, and slow, solemn voice, ends the blessing with a soliloquy, which always includes a thanks to "that indescribably beautiful tower of rock behind me."

Sanders loves Devils Tower. Before he bought the lodge, it drew him back every year, just like it did Roy Neary and Henrietta Mann.

"To me, it's a sacred place. To climb it is to practice my religion," he says. Sanders intentionally disregards the no-climb request and climbs and guides on the Tower in June. "June is a sacred month to me. It contains the summer solstice, a full moon, and my sobriety date," declares the former alcoholic. "Climbing is one of the things that makes me feel very close to my creator. In June, I climb on Devils Tower in even a more worshipful way than I do all the other months of the year. And unlike the Native Americans, I openly invite others to come and worship with me."

But Sanders is in the minority. According to Scott Brown, chief ranger of Devils Tower, of the 4,000 climbers who come to the Tower every year, only 8 percent climb in June. Of those, more than half are guided by climbers like Frank Sanders. "We live in a country where freedom of religion is enshrined in the Constitution," says Mann, a former director of the AIRFA coalition. "In the context of how and where we live today, the Devils Tower policy is a respectful attempt to recognize the rights of Indian spirituality."

Just in time for the centennial, the path of the Tower's guardianship has come full circle: In May, Dorothy FireCloud, a 50-year-old Rosebud Sioux with a law degree and a long history with the Bureau of Indian Affairs, was appointed the new superintendent of Devils Tower National Monument.