Did You Know?
Geology Archive
Devil's Postpile National Monument
CALIFORNIA
DID YOU KNOW?
Hot lava cooled and cracked some 900,000 years ago and formed basalt columns 40 to 60 feet high resembling a giant pipe organ. This area located between Yosemite and Kings Canyon national parks in California, is known as Devils Postpile National Monument.
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Lightning Bolt
DID YOU KNOW?
When lightning strikes a sand dune, the high temperature fuses quartz sand grains into glass rod-like structures called fulgurites. These could form anyplace that has both lightning and sand, you can see one on exhibit at the Great Sand Dunes National Monument and Preserve visitor center in Colorado.
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Wizard Island, Crater Lake National Park
OREGON
DID YOU KNOW?
Volcanic cinder cones are made of many layers of poorly cemented broken rocks and ash. Wizard Island is a cinder cone which rises 760 feet (233 meters) above the surface of Crater Lake in Crater Lake National Park, Oregon.
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Mt. Owen, Grand Teton National Park
WYOMING
DID YOU KNOW?
The oldest dated rocks in the National Parks are nearly 2.7 billion years old! They are part of a conspicuously layered complexly deformed metamorphic gneiss on Mt. Owen in Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming.
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Ashley Medlin, Mammoth Cave
National Park
KENTUCKY
DID YOU KNOW?
The longest known cave in the world is Mammoth Cave, located in Mammoth Cave National Park, Kentucky. With more than 350 miles of surveyed passages Mammoth Cave is almost three times longer than any other mapped cave in the world.
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Lincoln Memorial
Washington D.C.
DID YOU KNOW?
Each of the three basic rock types was used in the construction of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC; igneous granite is found in the base and lower steps of the memorial, the floor and statue of President Lincoln are made of metamorphic marble, and the interior columns and walls are composed of sedimentary limestone.
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Mauna Loa Caldera, Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, HAWAII
DID YOU KNOW?
Mauna Loa, the largest volcano on Earth, is located in Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, Hawaii. Mauna Loa is over 30,000-ft tall from the sea floor to the summit, that’s taller than Mt. Everest!
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Geyser at Yellowstone National Park
WYOMING
DID YOU KNOW?
There are fewer than 1,000 geysers in the whole world and over 500 of them are located in Yellowstone National Park. That is the highest concentration of geysers on the planet!
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Mount Rushmore
South Dakota
DID YOU KNOW?
The granite from which the presidents’ carvings, at Mt. Rushmore National Memorial in South Dakota, were created is two billion years old (Precambrian Era, Proterozoic Period).
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Dwarf Mammoth Skeleton, Channel Islands National Park,
CALIFORNIA
DID YOU KNOW?
The smallest mammoth fossils found in North
America are in a National Park. The dwarf mammoth
skeletons are found in Channel Islands NP.
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