Medicine Wheel of the Big Horn Mountains, Wyoming. An overview.
Maps of the area and roads, geological makeup, includes some beautiful (and detailed!) photography
The Wheel is located on a narrow ridge (arete) overlooking two cirques. Parking is at a visitor center about 2 km (1.5 miles) off Route 14. Visitors have to walk the remaining distance on an easy trail. Most site descriptions say it’s 1.5 miles but I estimate it as only a mile. The road is drivable to the wheel and beyond and people desiring access to the lands beyond can drive through but may not park at the site. Handicapped visitors can drive up, snow permitting (when I was there in late June, 2003, a large snowbank still blocked the road.)
Solar Center, includes astronomical alignments and a video tour
The area is free of snow only for 2 months — around the summer solstice.
The wheel has 28 spokes, the same number used in the roofs of ceremonial buildings such as the Lakota Sundance lodge. These always includes an entrance to the east, facing the rising Sun, and include 28 rafters for the 28 days in the lunar cycle. The number 28 is sacred to some of the Indian tribes because of its significance as the lunar month. In Bighorn’s case, could the special number 28 also refer to the helicial or dawn rising of Rigel 28 days past the Solstice, and Sirius another 28 past that?
Sacred destinations, photographs and history
The Bighorn Medicine Wheel is the most important of several medicine wheels in the American West. Constructed around 700 years ago and aligned with the stars, it is an important sacred site for local Indians as well as New Age practitioners.
Around 100 medicine wheels have been identified throughout North America, including examples in South Dakota, Wyoming, Montana, Alberta, and Saskatchewan. The Bighorn Medicine Wheel is considered the type site.
The Medicine Wheel is located in the Bighorn National Forest on the western peak of Medicine Mountain at an elevation of 9642 feet in the Bighorn Range east of Lovell, Wyoming. The 75-foot diameter Medicine Wheel is a roughly circular alignment of rocks and associated cairns enclosing 28 radial rows of rock extending out from a central cairn.
Whatever the Medicine Wheel was originally built for, it has been used as a place of prayer for many Native Americans. Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce tribe was known to fast at the Wheel, while Chief Washakie of the Shoshone tribe claimed to have obtained his medicine there.