Sign on U.S. Hwy. 26 a third of a mile south of Picture Gorge.
Marker Name: Picture Gorge
Marker Text: To many, the sharp, steep walls of Picture Gorge suggest a sudden cataclysm and not the slow and relentless forces that actually shaped it. Each of the seventeen dark layers in the gorge was once a widespread flood of lava that flowed from cracks in the earth about sixteen million years ago. Incinerating the land, the basalt lava floods cooled as horizontal layers, one on top of another. The average time between lava flows is estimated at 8,000 years.
Over millions of years, volcanic ash falls and water-borne sediments buried the dark layers under deep deposits. Later, broad blocks of land bent, tilted steeply, and faulted as erosion carved the landscape.
It was along faultlines in the resistant basalt layers that stream and river cater slowly cut downward more than one thousand feet, forming the steep, scenic gorge before you.
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