Falls Trail Tour - Stop 11

Look for the clear boundary between the dark basalt on the left and the lighter tuff.

NPS Photo

Quick Facts

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Information Kiosk/Bulletin Board

Look at the northeast wall of the canyon. Can you notice the boundary between basalt and tuff? This line represents one wall of the old Rio Grande waterway. Before the eruption of the Jemez Volcano, the big river flowed here. Its channel was changed and pushed southward by the new deposition of ash. Look a bit further downstream, and you can see another basalt-tuff boundary outlining the far wall of that Rio Grande channel.