The Eternal Flame Falls is a small waterfall located in the Shale Creek Preserve, a section of Chestnut Ridge Park in Western New York.
A small grotto at the waterfall's base emits natural gas, which can be lit to produce a small flame. This flame is visible nearly year round, although it can be extinguished and must occasionally be re-lit.
Once considered an "obscure" attraction in the region, recent media attention and improvements to the access trail have led to an increased number of visitors in recent years.The increased popularity of the falls has led to some negative impacts, such as an increase in litter, vandalism, pollution, and impacts on the surrounding terrain by tourists, but also fueled a successful public protest against a plan to clear a nearby forested area to install a disc golf course in 2012.
The Eternal Flame Falls is a small waterfall located in the Shale Creek Preserve, a section of Chestnut Ridge Park in Western New York. A small grotto at the waterfall's base emits natural gas, which can be lit to produce a small flame. This flame is visible nearly year round, although it can be extinguished and must occasionally be re-lit.
At the heart of this waterfall is a small flickering flame that is caused by a natural gas pocket and hikers that pass by the falls and relight the gas pocket whenever it sputters out, keeping the flame in an eternal cycle. The eternal flames caused by natural gas pockets are common, but the imagery of a lone flame under torrents of water make Eternal Flame Falls unique.
The imagery has inspired some active imaginations resulting in legends and sightings of elves in the area, and while those legends have obviously been disproved, the falls remains a mystery from a scientific perspective. The natural gas that eternal flame sites give off comes from a reaction caused by old and very hot shale rocks.
The falls, made out of relatively young shale, and as hot as a cup of tea, should be the last place you would expect an eternal flame. Yet, defying all scientific explanation, and the massive amounts of water around it, the flame burns on.According to one geologist involved in the 2013 study, the seep's apparent source could provide evidence for a previously unknown geologic mechanism by which natural gas is produced within shale. Typically, shale must be hot (around 100 °C [212 °F]) for its carbon structures to break down and form smaller natural gas molecules. However, the shale from which Eternal Flame Falls draws its gas is much cooler, in addition to being younger and shallower than typical gas-bearing shale. This may indicate that additional, as yet undemonstrated, processes can contribute to the creation of natural gas in shale; one possibility is that a catalyst capable of breaking down shale in cooler conditions is present.
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