A Monstrous mound of … minerals!
By Tas Walker
Tourists visiting the town of Thermopolis (‘city of heat’), Wyoming
(USA), are amazed by a monstrous rock mound in Hot Springs State Park. The mound
dwarfs sightseers and many people would claim it looks immensely old. Astonishingly
though, it is only young.
Photo by Charley Foster
The mound began in 1903 when someone drove an iron pipe into the ground, allowing
mineral-rich underground water to escape. Flowing out of the top of the pipe, the
water released calcium carbonate mineral from solution and deposited it as travertine
on every solid surface.
Within a few years, the travertine deposit had a huge base and tapered to a peak
at the top of the pipe. The rock hung like pastel-coloured curtains and the locals
called it Tepee Fountain.
Today the mound is a little fatter and rounder than a tepee, and the water flow
has long ceased—it’s an extinct fountain.
‘Tepee Fountain’ now looks more like an elephant than a tepee. And the
fountain that formed it has long stopped flowing. Remarkably, this rock formation
mostly formed in a few decades, 100 years ago. The above tourist brochure promoting
Hot Springs and Thermopolis, was published in the early 1900s. The deposit had grown
to a huge size in only a few years.
Why does this rock deposit astound tourists so? People are surprised because the
huge mound challenges their cultural conditioning. It contradicts what we have been
led to expect about the age of rocks.
Teepee Fountain illustrates that millions of years are not needed to produce solid rock
People instinctively think of geological events such as petrifaction, fossilization
and flowstone formation in terms of millions of years. When guides show us the stalactites
and stalagmites in tourist caves, they tell us they took hundreds of thousands of
years or more to form—drop by drop.
But the rock mound at Thermopolis proves it does not take vast amounts of time to
form such objects. It just takes the right chemical environment.
This gives us in miniature an example of the sorts of things that probably happened
during the global Flood of Noah’s day. With lots of mineral-rich water flowing
out of the ground, it is not surprising that sedimentary rocks all over the earth—often
thousands of metres thick—have turned into rock since the Flood, 4,500 years ago.
Tepee Fountain illustrates that millions of years are not needed to produce solid
rock.
Teepee Fountain still flowing
Feedback from one of our readers
— Creation 28(3):4
I enjoyed reading your article in Creation magazine on the Teepee Fountain
at Thermopolis Wyoming. ...
However, you said in the article that the fountain's water had long since stopped
flowing. As can be seen in the photo, a substantial amount of water is still flowing
out of the top as of June 2001 (there are drains about the bottom of the structure
to collect the water).
KEITH WANSER
California, USA
Thank you too for the picture and correction, Keith.
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