A thirty-foot cascade on Shale Creek with a small grotto behind the water, and in the grotto a flame that burns more or less permanently. It is real natural gas, seeping up from Rhinestreet Shale about 400 metres down through faults that tectonic movement opened, and somebody has to relight it now and then. A 2013 study by geologists from Indiana University Bloomington and Italy’s National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology found the seep unusually rich, about 35 percent ethane and propane against typical natural gas, putting out roughly a kilogram of methane a day, and noted that the shale is cooler than the standard model needs, so some as yet undemonstrated process may be making the gas. The trail reopened in August 2023 with 139 box steps and 120 feet of railing and is still a hard descent. Chestnut Ridge Park, Erie County, New York.
Chestnut Ridge Park, New York
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