Devils Tower in Alpine: A Sugar Baron’s Stone Folly

Reviewed by Josh N · Updated August 27, 2026 · How we verify

Devils Tower in Alpine is not the kind of ruin you stumble on by accident. It sits in one of the wealthiest corners of New Jersey, a squat gothic shaft of stone rising out of ground otherwise given over to gated driveways and clipped lawns, and it was built for a reason that had nothing to do with the occult. A sugar importer wanted his wife to be able to see New York City. Everything else attached to the tower came later, and most of it came from other people’s mouths.

A Sugar Fortune and a View of Manhattan

The tower was raised in the early 1900s by Manuel Rionda, a wealthy sugar importer, as a gift to his wife, Harriet. The purpose was straightforward: height. From the top of the structure, Harriet could look east across the Hudson to the Manhattan skyline, a view the estate’s ground level could not deliver. An underground tunnel reportedly linked the tower to the Rionda mansion, so the climb could be made without stepping outside, which is the sort of detail that reads as romantic in a 1900s estate and as sinister once a place has been renamed after the devil.

That is the documented core of the story, and it is worth holding onto, because the tower’s reputation now rests almost entirely on what people have said about it since. Architecturally it is a private ornamental structure, a folly with a purpose, built by a man with the money to solve a sightline problem with masonry.

What the Legend Says About Harriet Rionda

The version of events that made Devils Tower notorious is a story of betrayal. As it is told locally, Harriet climbed the tower, saw her husband with another woman, and threw herself from the top. Her death is presented as the wound the place never closed, the moment that turned a viewing platform into a haunted landmark.

This should be read as folklore rather than record. The account circulates as legend, passed between visitors and repeated in ghost guides, and the tower’s fame rests on it far more securely than any documentation does. The pattern is a familiar one: a striking building, a wealthy family, a fall from a height, and a moral about infidelity. It is a good story. It is not the same thing as a verified event.

What follows in the legend is that Manuel Rionda tried to seal the tower off, hoping to stop whatever had begun there. Sealing it, in the telling, did nothing. Interest only grew.

The Demolition Crew and the Name That Stuck

The tower’s nickname is usually traced to a second layer of the legend. Plans were reportedly made to pull the structure down, on grounds of safety and of the unwelcome attention its reputation attracted. The demolition is said to have been abandoned after a series of accidents and deaths among the crew, which local storytelling read as the tower defending itself.

Again, this is folklore doing what folklore does, explaining a surviving building by insisting it could not be removed. The practical result is the same either way: the tower is still standing, and the name Devil’s Tower travelled further than Rionda’s ever did.

Wails, Rituals and Six Circuits Walked Backwards

Reported phenomena at the site cluster around sound and around ritual. Visitors have described a mournful wail heard near the base, taken by those who believe the legend to be Harriet. Others report unexplained activity in the surrounding woods and driveways, the usual vocabulary of cold spots, movement at the edge of vision, and equipment behaving oddly.

There are also long-standing rumours that the site was used for occult practices at some point in its history, which has attracted the kind of visitor who arrives hoping to provoke something rather than observe it. The best known instruction in the local lore is specific: walk backwards around the tower six times at midnight and something is supposed to answer. It is worth being clear that this is a dare passed between teenagers and thrill seekers, not a documented procedure with documented results. No verified account establishes that anything happens when it is attempted, beyond the obvious risk of walking backwards in the dark on uneven private ground.

Seeing Devils Tower Without Making Trouble

The tower stands at 12 The Esplanade in Alpine, deep inside a quiet, affluent residential area. This is the single most important thing to understand before making the trip: there is no visitor centre, no ticket, no interpretive sign and no tour. The structure sits among private homes and private land, and the roads around it are residential roads where a parked car full of people at midnight is noticed immediately.

Anyone genuinely interested in the tower should treat it as a piece of architecture to be viewed from public ground with permission where required, and should not climb, enter, or cross onto property to reach it. The legend has already cost the site a reputation it cannot shed. It does not need the additional weight of trespass complaints.

What Devils Tower in Alpine offers, honestly stated, is a strange and handsome piece of early twentieth century stonework built out of one man’s wealth and affection, wrapped in a century of stories about a fall that no record confirms. Both halves of that are worth knowing. Only one of them is history.

See Devils Tower for Yourself

Sources

• geohack.toolforge.org
• Wikipedia: MetLife Stadium

Address: 12 The Esplanade

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