The Geologic Oddity in California; Devils Postpile
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- Опубликовано: 29 сен 2024
- One of the most impressive features within California is a geologic oddity known as the Devils Postpile. This structure contains a group of towering near perfect hexagonal columns. These columns have a volcanic origin, and originated less than 100,000 years ago. This video will discuss how Devils Postpile within Devils Postpile National Monument formed, and mention some nearby related geologic features such as the Long Valley Supervolcano.
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Be sure to check out the long chain of volcanic domes and explosion craters while in the vicinity! :D
I tried to get there back in July when I was on vacation out there but you need to take a shuttle and all tickets were booked. However there is an even bigger similar formation we found on the way home called Columns Of the Giants It is north of Mamoth lakes along the Sonora Pass.
How about the giants causeway in Ni Ireland & how the same rocks can be found on the west coast of Scotland & the east coast of the northern US.
@@lazerman121 When I was a kid, back in the '50s and '60s, it was easy to get there, but that was then and this is now. You also couldn't swim in Hot Creek the last time I was there, either, which was a huge disappointment.
A lot has changed in terms of accessibility to Devil's Postpile since I was a kid; Hot Creek as well. When I was there in the early 70s you could still swim in Hot Creek, and the trout fishing there was sublime. Now, you don't dare set foot in the water at Hot Creek due to the same volcanic processes that formed all of these geological gems in the Long Valley and Mammoth Lakes area. It speaks to the dynamic nature of volcanism in the Long Valley Caldera, and that area is one of the things that piqued my interest in geology much later in life. As a kid, I knew there'd been volcanism occurring in the area; but I had no idea it was as active as it is. From Mammoth Mountain to Glass Mountain, from the Resurgent Dome to the Inyo/Mono Craters to Mono Lake, that entire area is a boiling cauldron beneath one's feet, and there are several earthquakes there almost daily that attest to the active volcanism going on as we speak.
@@briane173 When I was last there, Hot Creek was off limits because of the spread of some invasive species of snail. The time previous, just a couple of years earlier, people (including my wife and me) were swimming in the Creek despite signs all around warning of all sorts of thermal danger.
Geology Hub, I love you. You help me realise the majesty of the natural world. Thank you.
Glad I could help! :)
I used to go camping in that area when I was younger. Some excellent trout fishing, as well as some really good prospecting and some amazing scenery.
Glad you got to see some of the natural beauty of California. It is an amazing place.
@@kenycharles8600 my bro I live in the mojave... San bernardino county... I see ca everyday..... And I love my state!!
@@shanecarubbi7864 there are several creek bottoms around Creek and Okmulgee counties in Oklahoma that have sandstone bottoms in square formations like a checkerboard. I lived in California from 63 to 68 and visited family, who still live there, several times. California has many places that are a paradise.
@@kenycharles8600 I would love to travel to Oklahoma! And see the goodness around there. Thank's my friend for sharing your States cool stuff. 🙂
@@kenycharles8600 nice my friend!!! Maybe if I'm up in Bishop and you as well from, somewhere, will have a beer or so, tell some funny stories and we can hit the prospects together..... I'm not stingy and I'll show you where the gold is lol.. I'll even show where the trout are biting. 🙂
There is also a really amazing Basalt column cliff exposed near High Island Reservoir, Sai Kung, Hong Kong. What I found interesting is that they have a S-like kink in them.
I've been there while visiting Mono-Inyo Craters and LV Caldera. The Postpile is quite mind-absorbing. I didn't get as far as Rainbow Falls but saw Devil's Postpile and was in awe.
It's fascinating to see how odd geometric shapes form like that. It would be cool to see an entire video on Devil's Tower!
He did one already.
ruclips.net/video/fxq80p6DobU/видео.html
Pecos Hank (tornado chaser extraordinary) has a great video on the Devils Tower. Enjoy!
petrified giant plants
Your videos are excellent. Concise, accurate...minimum verbiage. INFORMATIVE. Clearly apparent you find all of this fascinating, yes?
The state of Washington has several locations, where during the Columbia Flood Basalts, which occurred between 16-5 million years ago, that have the same kind of hexagonal post formations.
Columns of The Giants on hay 108 east of Sonora CA. Same volcanic chain.
Geology hub love the videos. Could you do a video on Stoneman lake Arizona?
When I was there, you had to take a shuttle into the monument. So, I could have spent four or five hours there, with about three of those hours dealing with the transportation in and out.
I opted to spend the time in Yosemite instead.
Stayed at Lee Vining (Mono Lake) after leaving Yosemite. It's the oldest continuing existing lake in North America, and heavily mineralized since it's in a basin. The Alkali Flies there were... interesting... GeologyHub should do a video just on Mono Lake alone...
I'm a little surprised that you didn't use the common name for this kind of basalt formation as columnar basalt. It is always impressive to see such regular lava formations. The image at 3:15 looks like somebody's hexagonal rock patio from some ancient resident's yard.
You also have these in the columbia river gorge and other parts of the pacific northwest
My parents took us kids here on an educational vacation....also visited Mono Lake. Both areas very profound. I highly recommend going. I enjoyed it much more than Disneyland.
Same as Giants Causeway in the Northern Coastline of lreland....what part does magnetic interaction play in the structural forming l wonder?
Hi Amanda I've been pestering him to do one about the giants causeway & how the same basalt formations are found on the north Antrim coast as well as the west coast of Scotland and the north eastern USA.hi from Belfast ☘️
I was under the assumption that the hexagonal shape was due to the hexagonal crystalline structure of the substrate magma, where slow cooling allowed the crystals to "grow" into each other and further contraction allowed for the separation at the crystal boundries.
There are several different minerals in basalt, so the rock as a whole wouldn't reflect the crystalline structure of it's individual components as it cooled. And beside that, none of the pyroxenes nor plagioclase have hexagonal crystals.
Did you know that there are similar basalt columns on the island of Kauai? I was born and raise there and always marveled at them. If you are interested, the next time I am on Kauai I will send you pics of the columns.
That was very interesting! Thanks! 🌟
Frenchmans coulee in Wa State. Many other locations in Wa State, have columnar basalt
curious similarity to the giants causeway in ireland. interesting to see a different view of it.
New Hampshire has this form somewhere. Could you go over them in that location?
Also the Organ pipes of Mount Koonya in Hobart Tasmania.
Basalt pillars just like the ones at The Giants Causeway in Northern Ireland
I've been there, it was a long time ago!
Great vid 👍🇺🇸california eastern sierra , also check out fossil falls
This is great little hidden gem
معلومة رائعة
Very interesting
Looks just like sheepeaters cliff in yellowstone. Theirs also a similar area although not a s large just a few miles from my house in cascade montana. Not really an oddity.
The same shapes can also be seen at Giants Causeway in Northern Ireland, Devils Tower in the US and other parts of the world where Ancient Trees existed with names such as Giant and Devil still attached to these locations.
Is mono Lake a caldera?
He did a video on Mono County
ruclips.net/video/2nxgzcb19TY/видео.html
I've been to Giant's Causeway in Northern Ireland. It's really amazing.
What an amazing place to visit! The whole devil's postpile area is filled with great hiking trails that lead to numerous lakes and other features. If possible, stop by the Minaret Vista where you can see sweeping views of the mountain range which includes Ritter, Banner, and the Minarets.
Have never been. Truly fascinating though what shapes these volcanoes have been able to produce. Way beyond my understanding, yet so beautiful.
Thank you for the heads up Jared.
There’s a similarly majestic but smaller feature near Melbourne, Australia called ‘The Organ Pipes’
That "Devil" guy seems to be quite a productive artist. Thumbs up!
Some say if you sell your soul to him, he will paint whatever you wish.
He's good with stone apparently.
I have a home in Mammoth. It's the most scenically beautiful area. I
love the eastern Sierra Nevada. However, Washington State has the same
type of hexagonal columns. They're near the roadways, so easy to get to
and appreciate.
Where Ned Zinger lost his hammer.
Yes I just posted that Mt. St Helen's has a area like this as well
@@benwinkel Nick Zentner, but yeah 😉
I just drove between Spokane and Corvallis OR. The basalt along the Columbia river is stunning.
@@RoxnDox ruclips.net/video/qJWtgvsm_ms/видео.html
There's another geologic oddity in that area worth looking for. The Lost Cement Mine. Mark Twain saw the cement ore and wrote about it in "Roughing It." He said gold nuggets in the ore looked like raisins in a fruit cake. Said the ore was fully 1/3 pure gold and quite seductive in appearance.
Sounds very similar to the supposed lost Dutchman mine, which is “apparently” located northwest of Superior, Arizona
@@GeologyHub What started that legend was the 40 lbs of extremely rich gold ore found in a candlebox under the Dutchman's bed when he died. That ore assayed at 5.500 ounces per ton. Many people saw that ore and that's why the existence of the mine was believed.
A sample of the cement ore was on display at a saloon in Aurora, Nevada during it's heyday. Many people saw the ore, including Mark Twain, so that deposit also has to exist. After all, both the Dutchman's ore and the Cement ore have to come from somewhere.
Columnar basalt. Would you please do a video about the Great Lisbon Earthquake of 1755. Thank you. Keep up the good work
You should include Tahiti where the basalt columns were stacked in alternating layers through some sort of Herculean effort to construct temples to their Polynesian deities. It's just as impressive of a construction as the Easter Island Moai are but far less well known.
This same approach was done on the island of Pohnpei in Micronesia in the Nan Madol ruins:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nan_Madol
Here before the “omg they’re TrEeS! ScIENcE LiEs To U!!!” Group invades.
lava doesnt form basalt columns
This looks similar to the Organ pipes formation near Melbourne Victoria. I have also seen something similar at Mt Scoria near Biloela Queensland. The Mt Scoria hexagonal columns have the interesting characteristic that they ring like a bell when struck with a hammer.
There is also the Tesselated Pavement on the East coast of Tasmania, quite large.
The stone must be really dense to ring when struck.
@@kenycharles8600 I don’t know why they do this , I did have it explained to me many years ago but recollection fails me, something to do with temperature conditions at the time of hardening. It is only the columns at the peak of the hill that ring.
@@johnyoung1128 I must research this phenomenon more deeply. Thank you for the rabbit hole!
Hello GeologyHub ,pls make a Video
about the geologic oddity in Germany/Bavaria/Parkstein called Parkstein.
P.s.Your Videos are amazing.
Nice, thankyou! I've wanted to see Devil's Postpile since I was a kid. In recent years I've gotten to know various features of the neighborhood- Mono Lake, various hotsprings and so on, so learning the context of the monument is nice. The last time I flew south I returned to the NW on a flight that came up past the Salton Sea and I got to view from the air how S. Cal. is ripping apart, bleeding basalt. So I got the continental context that way. Columnar basalt is common enough that it's common to see columns on sale in places that deal in "landscaping rock".
Aww, you missed Fingal's Cave in your list of other basaltic lava formations.
Yeah that was one of the first 3 basaltic hexagonal column formations that came to mind. Technically its the same Large Igneous Province(LIP) specifically the North Atlantic Large Igneous Province (NALIP) that Giant's Causeway formed from when the British isles and other islands were rifted apart from Greenland also producing the Paleocene Eocene Thermal Maximum(PETM). The hot spot responsible for the formation of NALIP still sits on the extension of the Mid Atlantic Ridge it created forming Iceland. Definitely a much cooler (or should I say hotter?) origin story.
;)
@@Dragrath1 -- ah, a fellow geology geek, lol. Pleased to meet you, and kudos for knowing the details for Fingal's Cave and the LIP.
There's another place on top of Sonora pass like Devil's postpile except there's a cave underneath and the ceiling looks like the top of Devil's postpile
Americans see a natural feature: The DEVIL's Postpile! The DEVIL's Elbow! SATAN's creek!
Australians: The Walls of Jerusalem, the 12 Apostles, Cathedral rock, The Organ Pipes
Tasmanians: Bust-Me-Gall hill, Break-Me-Neck hill, Funny Knob Creek, The Butts.
It's about a Week since I asked about those Basaltcolumns... Wow, you're fast to reply!!! Thanks for this interesting Information and learning Lesson! I suspected something way more complicated to create them, than just plain slow cooling.... Thanks and greetings from Switzerland:)
Used to visit this entire area as a kid with my family. Such a large region of volcanic formations! Owens Valley in general is an interesting topic too. Massive eruption, obsidian all over the place.
Also noteworthy are Kilt Rock in the Isle of Skye and the Isle of Staffa with Fingal's Cave. Great Channel!
Saw it for the first time with my Uncle Walt 65 years ago while deer hunting . Took my wife to see it 20 years ago while fly fishing at Hot Creek . It is very interesting to see the shape of the ''posts'' at the top !...........so much for the ''Earth is 7000 years old, and some guy-in-the-sky built it in 6 days '' crap !
Another great and interesting video. Thank you once again.
Couple of years ago I was hiking around Mt Shasta and I came upon columnar basalts. A waterfall has eroded into the flow and carved out the softer material underneath it so you can really see the hexagonal shapes. I didn't know Mt Shasta could produce basaltic lava but turns out Cascade volcanoes have a large range of lava types.
Nam Mandal, Pohnpei- Micronesia
👌
The rock formation are petrified tree stumps.. there were giant trees on earth at one time..
Thank You.
These are not crystals... seriously ?!?!? These are some type of granite possibly, and they match the hexagonal shape of the pillars at Devil's Tower. No natural process that exists could have made granite into hexagons.... think aboyut it.
trees are natural
Those are biological. Mudfossil University channel explains about that.
Why does everyone mention the Giant's Causeway, but forget Fingal's Cave?
Not really an oddity.... Eastern WA and OR are covered in basalt columns, there's an old quarry in the ochocos that has a massive collumnular fan/spray formation.
Hi Geologyhub, my name is Jeffrey Christopher, l grew up in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn, in junior high School l remember learning about the terminal moraines from the ice age in Earth science class in 1970 that were deposited in what is now my old neighborhood, l remember being told that these moraines were comprised of rocks and debris that were brought down by glaciers all the way from Canada, there's a street called highland boulevard, from that vantage point you can look south and see much of south Brooklyn to starett city and the belt parkway, lm also curious about the large rock outcroppings that inundate Central Park in Manhattan, are these glacier related in origin ? I've noticed that the marks on these rock formations tend to be facing north to south.
This looks like the same results as the Giant's Causeway Northern Ireland and Fingal's Cave on the Isle of Staffa
The basaltic formations of the Central Basin of Eastern Washington are also impressive and includes the huge natural area known as Dry Falls, where repeated Ice Age floods roiled across the state on its way to the Pacific Ocean. The Missoula Lake Floods are some of the best studied ice age floods on the entire planet.
Nick Zentner fan, right?
Yo, that's just the Zeta Halo ring
There are also hexagonal columns like these in the Superstition Mountains near Phoenix. They can be viewed on the Peralta Trail.
The most beautiful State in the Union. To bad its ruined by its politicians.
You're wrong about Devils Tower it's a tree trunk we tested it with vegetable matter out of it the DNA says it's a tree trunk buddy not basalt
Very cool, thanks for the great explanation on how the hexagons were formed. I have always kept wondering about that since I have seen Giant's Causeway.
There’s columns in Washington state as well not just the places you mentioned.
The Devil's Tower is phonolite, not basalt.
Yes! For something called "Geology Hub" you'd think they'd get that right. People typically label them basalt. The fluid nature of basalt lava makes it more likely to flow in thick layers, so the cooling columns are most likely in basalt.
And what about that comment about "crystal structure"... what's that about?
Pretty much the entire state of Washington east of the Cascades is basalt columns. The Basalt is estimated to be at least 5 miles thick in some places.
BALONEY NARRATIVE BASED ON VOLCANO THEORY. WHAT IS THE PILE? FOOT OF A TITAN? DEFINITELY NOT VOLCANO CREATED.
Thanks that was a great explanation of this amazing natural wonder!
That type of formation are all over the place, in northern New Mexico.
It may or may not be the same materials, but Devil's Tower is the best and most famous example of hexagon-shaped columns forming naturally.
The post pile is a humongous ancient fossilized tree.
There is a spot at Mt St Helen's with them as well.
Off the Lava Canyon trail.
(South side)
Another excellent video. Interesting stuff.
Subbed! I wish this was narrated with a human voice, no matter the accent.
high silicon %
This was a fabulous video. I'm a major geology fan and my favorite volcanic feature is columnar basalt. Thank you for putting this up!
There’s something similar in Ireland
It’s even more amazing in person! It’s also not far from Rainbow Falls which is pretty incredible as well.
Hello! We have these in Eugene Oregon! Our rock climbers love them!!
I might've seen a feature like that in Virginia's Shenandoah National Park. To see it, you have to hike a trail.
Hello, another devil named geo feature. Hmmmm.... Wonder if it had more to it than what meet's the eye too. Interesting, that it was made of a massive amount of thick flood basalt that cooled in a valley over a long period of time. Good things to note if see such a structure.
lava doesnt form basalt columns, they are petrified plants from before Noahs flood
Another distinctive and well known to the locals (As in the whole state!) basaltic column structure is the one called the Organ Pipes on Kunanyi/Mount Wellington in Tasmania, Australia.
History channel told me aliens made it …
You should make an episode on Centralia
There's also another one in Eastern Washington off Highway 12. But its andesite instead of basalt
Im litteraly two miles from it
As always, fascinating 🖖🏼
Hiking in the area there are a few more hexagonal features, including one with a curve in it down the same canyon Devil's Postpile is. None are of course as large.
Could you do Devils Punch bowl in Southern California The learning center was recently burned in one of our fires I’m almost 40 I went there as a child my son went there as a kid and now it’s gone
What about "Fingal's Cave" on the Isle of Staffa, Scotland? It also has hexagonal column features.
Sounds like they're everywhere. It must've been a worldwide event that caused it all,huh?
@@markberryhill2715 lol...
It’s very beautiful when greenstone does the hexagonal columnar thing.
Am I the only that sees the petrified stump of an ancient tree?
I see giant, petrified stumps of trees that existed in Noahs time
For Germans: The Lindenstumpf near Schondra, located close to the A7, has a similar looking feature.
I think the most famous example of this rock structure is Devils Tower, but you can find it all over the Northwest, from Yellowstone to the lava fields (now farms) in Oregon and Washington...
The Giant's Causway stretches all the way to the Isle of Staffa in the Hebrides. Mendelssohn visited Fingal's Cave, on Staffa, and completed his Hebrides Overture soon afterwards. The work caused the Isle of Staffa, and Fingal's Cave in particular, to become a popular tourist destination.
Anatomy of a flood basalt layer: Tablature = the jumbled top layer. Colonnade = the part with the columns. Tablature at devil's postpile was scraped off by glaciers.
Columnar Basalt is all over the Columbia River Basalt Region and is easily see throughout Central Washington, the Columbia River... It's the world's largest flood basalt region.