The third and final stop of my 2025 Boise area Snake River tour was a place with petroglyphs and lots and lots of large black boulders in addition to the beauty of the river itself. There is also an old railroad bridge which traverses the river, which has been modified for pedestrian use (the bridge, not the river!).
Views of the river from the bridge:
Here are some photos of the boulders:
Those were some of the smaller ones. Here are some bigger ones.
And here are some with the back of my car photobombing the shot.
Turns out they actually have a name. Ready for this? Bonneville Flood Melon Gravel!!
They are believed to be from a catastrophic flood some 15,000 years ago when a huge lake in the western US gave way. The petroglyphs are part of the drama too. They are believed to have been made by Native Americans 10 to 12,000 years ago. The boulders are called melon gravel after a WWII highway sign calling them petrified watermelons.
I didn’t research it but I suspect the catastrophic event was also responsible for the formation of the Bonneville Salt Flats near Salt Lake City when all that water finally settled down.
And as a final thought on the Snake River, I have decided to go back to Hells Canyon after I get back to Seattle from Alaska. I was going to drive south to Tucson anyway and will be doing some other things in the Pacific Northwest as well so I will add that to the list. Who knows, maybe I’ll even do a Jet-boat ride!
Yeeehaaa – bugs in my teeth…
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