Eternal Flame Falls
A flame burns in a grotto at the foot of a waterfall in an Erie County park, behind the water rather than beside it. A 2013 study found the rock underneath is neither hot enough nor old enough to make the gas the way geologists assumed, and the seep runs about 35 percent ethane and propane, possibly the richest of any known. The flame goes out. Hikers relight it.
Field Guide Entry
What is burning
Natural gas seeps out of a small alcove in the shale at the base of the falls, and it stays lit. The flame is a few inches high, sometimes doubled, sometimes out, and it sits far enough back in the rock that water falls in front of it without putting it out.
Why geologists went looking
The standard explanation for a seep like this is heat: shale buried deep enough and cooked long enough releases gas. In 2013, a team led by Giuseppe Etiope of Italy's National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology, working with Arndt Schimmelmann and Agnieszka Drobniak of Indiana University, published in Marine and Petroleum Geology and reported that the shale here fails that test. It is neither hot enough nor old enough.
Comparing the gas against regional well records put the source in the Rhinestreet Shale, a formation several hundred meters down. The composition is the odd part. Around 35 percent of what comes out is ethane and propane rather than methane, which the team noted may be the highest concentration measured at any natural seep.
What that leaves
The gas is arriving from deeper rock by a route nobody has fully described, and the flame it feeds is small enough to be extinguished by spray and relit with a lighter by whoever gets there next.
Visiting Information
The park is free, with a gravel lot that holds 50 or more cars and a portable toilet at the trailhead. Gates run from 7am to dusk in winter and to 9pm in summer.
The trail to the falls is a bit over half a mile each way and rougher than the distance suggests: stairs, several creek crossings, and wet shale that is slick even in dry weather. Boots that can get soaked are the right call, and the last stretch drops into the ravine.
Bring a lighter. The flame is out as often as not, and relighting it is the local custom rather than vandalism. Relighting it means holding a flame to the gap in the rock at the base of the falls and standing back.
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