The Strange Lake Filled With Stone Towers

If you want a location that looks like a set from a science fiction movie, visit Mono Lake. It sits on the eastern edge of the Sierra Nevada mountains in California, just outside Yosemite National Park.

What makes this place stand out are the huge, jagged rock spires rising from the shallow water. They look like crumbling sandcastles. Photographers flock here, especially at sunrise, when the calm water mirrors the unusual rocks perfectly.

A Lake With No Exit

Mono Lake is incredibly old. It has been sitting in this basin for over a million years. It is also completely landlocked. Rivers and streams flow into it, but the water has no way to reach the ocean.

Because the water cannot escape, it just sits there and evaporates in the desert sun. This leaves all the natural salts and minerals behind. As a result, the lake is over twice as salty as the ocean and extremely alkaline. You will not find any fish swimming here. But millions of tiny brine shrimp and alkali flies thrive in the harsh water, and they feed giant flocks of migratory birds.

How The Towers Grow

Those weird rock spires are called tufa towers. They are basically solid limestone. They form when fresh water from underground springs bubbles up into the alkaline lake water.

The fresh water is loaded with calcium, and the lake water is packed with carbonates. When the two mix, they instantly undergo a chemical reaction that forms calcium carbonate. Over hundreds of years, this reaction builds up underwater, growing these giant, knobby pillars inch by inch from the bottom of the lake.

The Human Impact

You might be wondering why you can see these towers if they only grow underwater. The answer is actually tied to the city of Los Angeles.

Back in the 1940s, the city started diverting the streams that fed Mono Lake to get more drinking water for Southern California. Because the lake was no longer getting refilled, the water level dropped by more than 40 feet. This massive drop suddenly exposed the underwater tufa towers to the open air.

These days, the water is managed carefully to help Mono Lake recover. Still, the towers stick out as a clear sign of how much people can change the land.