Flickr Favorite: Guadalupe Mountains Salt Flat by BongoInc
From BongoInc:
Salt Flat, West Texas
The Guadalupe Mountain Salt Flats are a remnant of an ancient, shallow lake that once occupied this area during the Pleistocene Epoch, approximately 1.8 million years ago. Salt collected here as streams drained mineral-laden water into this basin. The basin, called a graben, formed about 26 million years ago as faulting lifted the Guadalupe Mountains and depressed the adjacent block of the Earth’s crust. At the end of the last ice age, approximately 10,000 years ago, the lake dried up as the climate became more arid.
Mineral content in the ground imparts a beautiful turquoise tint to the rain water that collects in the basin.
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