When looking for the place where extraterrestrials would make their first contact with humans (at least in his 1977 movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind), Steven Spielberg had instructions for his location scout: "…scour America for a place that only my imagination told me existed." The scout came back after touring more than 2,700 miles throughout the West with two words: "Devils Tower." One look at it, and Spielberg realized the national monument in far eastern Wyoming was perfect.
He and the rest of the cast and crew spent over a month at Devils Tower getting ready for the spaceships to land. Prop guys were hard at work before Spielberg and the cast arrived, constructing elaborate sets at the foot of Pine Ridge (on U.S. 14 north of Keyhole State Park). Filming itself took 12 days. Most of the filming took place at Pine Ridge with some – remember Richard Dreyfuss and Teri Garr driving past all those dead cows? (they really weren't dead, but anesthetized on site by a Gillette veterinarian) – scenes shot along Wyoming Highway 24 and U.S. 14 as well as at various spots inside the national monument.