Medicine Wheel: The Sacred Site That Survived the Forest Service

At nearly ten thousand feet on the crest of the Bighorn Mountains, on land administered by the Bighorn National Forest, there is a stone wheel eighty feet in diameter. It was laid out on the ground by people whose names are not in the written record. The spokes of the wheel, twenty-eight of them, radiate outward from a central cairn to an outer ring of stones. Cairns mark specific points on the outer ring. Some cairns align with the rising and setting positions of particular stars at particular times of year.

The structure is called Medicine Wheel. Archaeologists estimate it was built somewhere between five hundred and eight hundred years ago, though some elements may be older. It continues to be used in ceremonies by members of the Crow, Cheyenne, Arapaho, Shoshone, Sioux, Lakota, and Bannock nations, among others. These tribes regard the site as sacred, as a place of communication with spiritual forces, and as a directional and calendrical instrument whose full significance is not fully recorded in any document.

In the nineteen nineties, the Forest Service proposed building a road improvement and expanded facilities that would have significantly altered the viewshed and access environment around the wheel. Tribal representatives objected through consultations required under the National Historic Preservation Act. The Forest Service modified its plans substantially after those consultations, protecting a much larger buffer zone around the site.

The wheel is now a National Historic Landmark. The management plan for it includes tribal consultation as an ongoing requirement, not a one-time courtesy. The tribes that use the site consider it active. The Forest Service's management framework, imperfectly, reflects that.