When
water goes down a hole in the earth and doesn’t come out anywhere that
anyone can find, where does it go? It’s a deep and dangerous hole that
no one wants to climb down into. Surely there's some way to test that.
A
few miles south of the U.S.-Canadian border, the Brule River flows
through Minnesota’s Judge C. R. Magney State Park, where it drops 800
feet in an 8-mile span, creating several waterfalls. A mile and a half
north of the shore of Lake Superior, a thick knuckle of rhyolite rock
juts out, dividing the river dramatically at the crest of the falls. To
the east, a traditional waterfall carves a downward path, but to the
west, a geological conundrum awaits visitors. A giant pothole, the
Devil’s Kettle, swallows half of the Brule and no one has any idea where
it goes. The consensus is that there must be an exit point somewhere
beneath Lake Superior, but over the years, researchers and the curious
have poured dye, pingpong balls, even logs into the kettle, then watched
the lake for any sign of them. So far, none has ever been found.
The
name Devil’s Kettle implies that the water pours straight down to hell
for Satan’s tea. You have to wonder why no one has thrown a waterproof
GPS tracking device down there. After all, we tags marine animals with
them all the time. Or maybe a GoPro on a long string. But it’s a great
story, and the mystery may be solved one day. Meanwhile, you can
read some of the untested theories at Mother Nature Network.
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