Smith Rock State Park –great geology at the edge of Oregon’s largest caldera
Smith Rock, the Crooked River, and modern Cascade volcanoes from Misery Ridge.
The view from outside the small visitor center at Smith Rock State Park offers a landscape of contrasts. The parking lot, and nearby camping and picnic areas, are flat, underlain by the edge of a basaltic lava flow that drops off in a series of steps to a narrow canyon, some 120 feet (37 m) below. The Crooked River, which rises about 100 miles (162 km) away in the High Lava Plains, fills much of the canyon bottom. Across the canyon, tan cliffs and spires of tuff, another volcanic rock, soar overhead. Smith Rock itself forms a peninsula of this rock, enclosed by a hairpin bend of the Crooked River. The tuff erupted 29.5 million years ago in the largest volcanic eruption to occur entirely within Oregon. Read more…
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