The Geologic Oddity in California; Devils Postpile
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- Опубліковано 4 вер 2021
- 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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I've been to Giant's Causeway in Northern Ireland. It's really amazing.
Geology Hub, I love you. You help me realise the majesty of the natural world. Thank you.
Glad I could help! :)
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.
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.
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.
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 ua-cam.com/video/qJWtgvsm_ms/v-deo.html
There’s a similarly majestic but smaller feature near Melbourne, Australia called ‘The Organ Pipes’
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.
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".
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.
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
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.
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.
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. 🙂
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!
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.
ua-cam.com/video/fxq80p6DobU/v-deo.html
Pecos Hank (tornado chaser extraordinary) has a great video on the Devils Tower. Enjoy!
petrified giant plants
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 !
Columnar basalt. Would you please do a video about the Great Lisbon Earthquake of 1755. Thank you. Keep up the good work
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.
Also noteworthy are Kilt Rock in the Isle of Skye and the Isle of Staffa with Fingal's Cave. Great Channel!
Another great and interesting video. Thank you once again.
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!
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:)
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.
Congrats on 50k love the videos
At 0:39, 3:15, 3:17, you can see that the tops of the columns have been eroded flat with scouring lines from the ice. A very nice video. Many thanks.
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?
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.
Our Boy Scout troop camped at Horseshoe Lake nearby in 1962; the lake had huge drifts of pumice stones floating in it. One of the other oddities was the spring and pool of highly-carbonated water close to the Devil's Post-pile.
Hello! We have these in Eugene Oregon! Our rock climbers love them!!
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.
It’s very beautiful when greenstone does the hexagonal columnar thing.
There are also hexagonal columns like these in the Superstition Mountains near Phoenix. They can be viewed on the Peralta Trail.
I saw the sign for Devils Post when I drove by but next time I’ll stop and check these amazing hexagons out. Thank you
Thank You.
It’s even more amazing in person! It’s also not far from Rainbow Falls which is pretty incredible as well.
Wonderful short and informative video. Thank you.
Very clear description of how they were formed. Thank you.
Hello GeologyHub ,pls make a Video
about the geologic oddity in Germany/Bavaria/Parkstein called Parkstein.
P.s.Your Videos are amazing.
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.
Another excellent video. Interesting stuff.
As a Nevadan, I appreciate the way you pronounced Nevada.
The video was pretty informative. I've always wondered how those rocks came to be that shape naturally.
Your videos are excellent. Concise, accurate...minimum verbiage. INFORMATIVE. Clearly apparent you find all of this fascinating, yes?
There is a spot at Mt St Helen's with them as well.
Off the Lava Canyon trail.
(South side)
Thanks that was a great explanation of this amazing natural wonder!
Geology hub love the videos. Could you do a video on Stoneman lake Arizona?
Great work, brother!!
Another good and interesting video. Thank You.
As always, fascinating 🖖🏼
I frequent this area, and if you look closely, many of the pebbles and rocks you find strewn about this area are pumice stones. Some places have more than others but as a whole pumice stones are dominant
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
I live in WA. The eastern side of the state is full of exposed basalt lava columns. They're really quite beautiful.
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.
Thank you for this video. I am a native Californian and am still amazed at the awesome geology right under our feet. Every time I hike or snowboard at Mammoth, and surrounding areas, I realize what a “hot” area it is. 😘
Great video.
Thx for sharing
Another place where there's Basaltic columns is Trentham Falls in Victoria Australia. There is a creek/waterfall gradually eroding the columns, back to the bedrock below.
I like most topics you talk about and I would like to know a list of super volcanoes
I hiked back in to see these in the 90s and it's a beautiful hike, plus the scale of the formation is impressive. It looks as if aliens made it, but a simple explanation. I didn't know these were so common, from all the comments, but it makes sense. I loved visiting that area, when I lived in the Bay Area, and Mono Lake has a special place in my heart. California is very rich in volcanic areas and I road tripped most of them, more than once (Lassen, Shasta, Mono, Long).
That was very interesting! Thanks! 🌟
I have been too the Postpile many times. It is so worth going to see. While you are there, go see Rainbow Falls.
Did not know about Panska Skala, thanks!
I might've seen a feature like that in Virginia's Shenandoah National Park. To see it, you have to hike a trail.
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.
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.
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...
Always fascinating feature
I never realized just how close I live to this. I visited Mono lake last summer and that was cool. this summer Imma have to go check out the Devils post pile I think.
What about the Fish Creel Caldera in Colorado and the Wheeler Geologic area there too ? Im very interested in these areas. Thanks for your very interesting videos. We hardly were taught much Geology in public school and that subject interests me greatly. You make awesome videos thnxx again...
These types of columns occur on the north shores of Lake Superior as well!
Very interesting
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.
They are also hexagonal lava columns in Eastern Wahington . The cracks there are large enough that if you drop something you'll never see it again .
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...
Great video upload. Any chance you could do a report on the hydrothermal uplift called Clear Creek?
Located in the San Benito Mtn range of coastal California, on BLM land called Clear Creek Management Area.
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.
For Germans: The Lindenstumpf near Schondra, located close to the A7, has a similar looking feature.
The New Jersey Palisades on the west side of the Hudson River are also basaltic columns that were intruded as a sill upwards through sandstone about 200 million years ago.
Columbia river basalts created miles of these post columns from the idaho border to the pacific ocean. Nice area to explore
Wow Great Video
Columns of The Giants on hay 108 east of Sonora CA. Same volcanic chain.
You should make an episode on Centralia
Good length video... never repeated himself... rare these days !!... good job
Been to the postpone a couple of times while camping near there. Even climbed to the top
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.
Thanks for the Video I believe there is a lava formation on White Pass similar to this in Washington state
That type of formation are all over the place, in northern New Mexico.
Channel goes hard
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 ☘️
there are some of these in Victoria, Australia too, called the Organ Pipes
curious similarity to the giants causeway in ireland. interesting to see a different view of it.
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.
You also have these in the columbia river gorge and other parts of the pacific northwest
There’s columns in Washington state as well not just the places you mentioned.
...and at Sawn Rocks in Mt Kaputar National Park in NSW Australia! 😀
You can find this kind of basalt in Ossipee NH, on the side of the area near the famous Ossipee Ring dike ❤️ go mining there quite frequently!! Amazing to see this columned basalt
I’m surprised that it was remained intact in the area for so long! That’s a pleasant surprise :)
I've been there, it was a long time ago!
Oh yay The Devil's Postpile! Thank you for doing one of my favorite places in California
Always wondered about these columns, only ever knew about them from Giants Causeway. Interesting to know that they form as a result of thick basaltic lava slowly cooling
Jacob C - One of the most interesting aspects is that they are found all across the world, yet they are not currently forming anywhere on the face of the planet. Another thing that makes them a mystery to science is that they are non-vesicular, and basalt will only cool without vesicles when it is extruded under at least 9820 feet of water.
👍🏼👍🏼 Well done.
This is great little hidden gem