"A mountaintop altar where 81 tribes still gather to pray, fast, and leave offerings to the sky"
Big Horn Medicine Wheel
Big Horn County, Wyoming, United States
At nearly 10,000 feet in Wyoming's Bighorn Mountains, stones form a wheel 80 feet across, with 28 spokes radiating toward the sky. No one knows who built it. The Crow say it was already ancient when they arrived, calling it the Sun's Lodge. Today, practitioners from 81 tribes come here to fast, to pray, to seek visions. Prayer cloths flutter from the fence. This is not a relic—it is an altar in use.
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Quick Facts
Location
Big Horn County, Wyoming, United States
Site Type
Coordinates
44.8259, -107.9215
Last Updated
Jan 5, 2026
Learn More
The Medicine Wheel's builders remain unknown. The Crow say it was already ancient when they arrived. Archaeologists estimate construction 300-800 years ago, but human use of Medicine Mountain extends back nearly 10,000 years. What is certain is that the site has served as an altar, oriented like a Plains Sun Dance Lodge, for centuries of ceremony.
Origin Story
No origin story claims the building of the Bighorn Medicine Wheel. This absence is itself significant. The Crow, who have used the site for centuries for vision quests and fasting, say the Wheel was already present when they arrived—very ancient, already sacred. Tom Yellowtail (Crow) told the story of Burnt Face, who built a medicine wheel in the Bighorns after the Little People healed his disfigured face; but that story refers to the Fort Smith Wheel on the Crow Reservation, not the Bighorn Wheel itself.
What the oral traditions do convey is the Wheel's function. Crow informant Flat-Dog told anthropologist Robert Lowie that it was the 'Sun's Lodge,' a place where many Crow went to fast. The horseshoe-shaped enclosures around the perimeter are associated with vision quest rituals. Whatever else the Wheel may be, it is—and has been—a place where people come to pray.
Key Figures
The Unknown Builders
Whoever constructed the Medicine Wheel left no claim and no name. Archaeologists estimate construction 300-800 years ago. No tribe claims to have built it. This mystery is part of the site's power.
Flat-Dog (Crow)
Crow informant who told anthropologist Robert Lowie that the Wheel was the 'Sun's Lodge,' very ancient, a place where many Crow went to fast. His account established the Wheel's significance in Crow tradition.
John Eddy
Astronomer who documented the Wheel's astronomical alignments in 1972-74, publishing his findings in Science. His work proposed that the cairns align with summer solstice sunrise/sunset and the heliacal risings of Sirius, Aldebaran, and Rigel.
The Consulting Tribes
Representatives of 16 tribes who negotiated the 1996 Historic Preservation Plan, establishing traditional cultural use as the management priority and creating a model for sacred site protection.
Spiritual Lineage
The Medicine Wheel belongs to no single tribe. Eighty-one different tribes have conducted ceremonies here. Traditional practitioners include Arapaho, Bannock, Blackfeet, Cheyenne, Crow, Kootenai-Salish, Lakota, Dakota, Plains Cree, Shoshone, Sioux, and Southern Ute, among others. The site sits at a crossroads of Northern Plains cultures, a convergence point where traditions meet. This pan-tribal significance is precisely what the 1996 Historic Preservation Plan sought to protect—not one tradition but many, not one tribe's altar but a shared sacred geography.
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