The Great Rift - Burley, Idaho

National Exploration of Idaho: The Great Rift

When you plan to visit Idaho, you plan to spend time outdoors, taking in the beautiful scenery and the majestic hills you see just about everywhere.  If you are traveling to Idaho, you do need to experience The Great Rift.  When you do, you will be taking in one of the most amazing experiences you will see in the world.  There are only two features like this known to humankind in the world.  That makes it definitely worth seeing.

What is the Great Rift?  It is the largest, the deepest as well as the most recent volcanic rift system in the United States.  You will find that one of the most important and most amazing aspects of this area is the sheer size of the rift.  The Great Rift encompasses some 635 square miles, which makes it incredibly large by most standards.  

The Great Rift is of belief to have creation some 15,000 years ago due to a very large fissure that extended some 65 miles.  At that time, the fissure opened up and emitted successive amounts of lava into the area.  Years later, after everything cooled and the lava was no more there was a tremendous work of art left.  The Great Rift provides some of the unique experiences because it has cinder cones located within, ice tubes, spatter caves and caves of other styles located throughout the region  

Throughout the entire region of the Great Rift you will find some 350,000 acres of land that has undisturbed and very unusually geologic designs to it.  It is an amazing, and unique, site to see.  If you are coming to Idaho to see any of the other natural landmarks that dot the landscape, chances are good that many of them lie along the Great Rift because the fissure caused their designed to happen.  

Visitors should call the local park service for hours of operation, as there are many challenging areas located throughout this "lava desert."  If you want to walk in a desert, this may be one of the best places to do so.  There is no fee for visiting this natural wonder.  To locate it, visit South Central Idaho, and it is located just north and east of the American Falls.  

By the way, the only other similar structure known in the world to be as this one is located in Africa.