Just outside the Black hills in northeastern Wyoming stands a spectacular erosional remnant, Devils Tower. It is nearly a vertical igneous body some 900 feet tall towering over the grasslands. The circumference at the base is one mile. Devils Tower is possibly the remains of a volcanic neck or a plug of magma that never reached the surface. How was this formed?
Magma was pushed upward through sedimentary layers and into place underground. At that time, the land surface would have been 3,000 feet higher, which would be 1,800 feet higher than the top of the tower!
The thick magma had to have solidified before the surrounding materials were eroded, otherwise the plug shape would not have been retained. Long columns grace the sides of the tower, most are five-sided. These columns are called columnar jointing. Columns are formed when the magma is cooled quickly causing it to contract, forming cracks. As it continually cooled, the cracks enlarged forming columns. Most columnar jointing is five or six-sided, however three to seven sides can be found. The lengths of these columns at Devils Tower show that it was one pool of magma, not a series of small flows on top of each other. Columns form perpendicular to the cooling surface, in this case, the cooling surface was horizontal, leading to vertical fractures.
How was Devils Tower exposed? The land would have been cut flat to the level of the top of the tower and the surrounding high hills and then a wide valley was cut revealing Devils Tower.
Now let’s put on our biblical glasses with the Genesis Flood in mind. Sedimentary layers were laid down in the Flood. Toward the end of the Flood, Devils Tower magma was pushed into place. Then other mountains rose up and valley went down (Psalms) and the waters rushed off the continents in sheets flowing to the oceans. These sheets of water thousands of miles wide would have cut wide flat landscapes; originally the land above the tower was 1,800 feet higher. The sheet flow would have cooled Devils Tower from the top, causing the cracks, producing the vertical columns.
As the floodwater decreased, the water flow would have divided into large channels and continued to erode the landscape. One of these channels cut the wide valley around the tower. These sediments are not found down slope in some huge flood plain area; they have been swept clean. The tower did not erode because it is composed of hard volcanic rock. Devils Tower is a remnant of catastrophic erosion that took place at the end of the Flood.
Why Devil’s Tower cannot be millions of years old.....
The tower exists, if millions of years old, it would most likely have eroded completely away.
Devils Tower could not be millions of years old, for it would have totally disappeared in a million years from the freeze-thaw cycle. Water from storms fill the cracks in the columns and then freeze during the cold months, enlarging the cracks causing the columns to crumble to the ground. Devil’s Tower should have been destroyed in less than 100,000 years because of the freeze-thaw weathering. Notice there is a modest amount of talus (fallen rock debris) at the base of the tower. Devils Tower is thousands of years old (The Flood took place about 4,300 years ago), not millions.
The erosion had to be rapid for the tower is steep, if the water flow have been slow, the tower would have been much smaller at its base. As it is, Devils Tower is almost vertical.
We can better understand the tall erosional remnants like Devil’s Tower, in the landforms we see today when we view then with biblical glasses. In the late stages of the flood, the water rushed off the continent in sheets. As the flood water subsided, they would have flowed in wide channels, eroding the landscape leaving remnants like Devil’s Tower.
“Devils Tower can be Explained by Floodwaters Runoff”, Michael Oard, Journal of
Creation August 2009, p. 124-127
“Devils Tower and Bible Glasses”, Tas Walker, Creation, June 2002, 20-23
Drawing flood by design p. 62 not
-As you travel down the hill from the tower, look for a gravel road on your right that
leads to the Joyner Ridge trailhead, this offers another incredible view especially an hour
prior to sunset.
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