'Close Encounters of the Third Kind', director Steven Spielberg's next movie after 'Jaws' is a modern movie classic. Re-released as a special edition three years later Spielberg chose to cut this scene but it remains one of the movie's most enduring images not least because the eerie, flat-topped outcrop where the aliens finally make their dramatic 'third encounter', actually exists. They certainly had a sense of theatre - even silhouetted against an azure Wyoming sky Devil's Tower is stark and foreboding.

There are numerous theories as to what created this dramatic stone feature but the truth is no-one really knows for certain. The legend told by the Crow Indians is typical. It recounts how two girls were chased by a bear and took refuge on a low rocky outcrop. After appealing to the Great Spirit to save them the rock started to grow taller until they were safely out of reach of the bear whose frustrated claw marks raked the side of the tower. According to the story the two girls remain on the summit.

The Kiowa legend is similar but in this tale it was seven little girls who were saved from the bear and transformed into seven stars twinkling in the night sky.

Most tribes consider the tower a sacred place and still perform many of their rituals on the site including sun dances, vision quests, prayers and offerings. In deference to these traditions it's considered respectful not to climb Devil's Tower during the month of June.