Texas Opens Recently Formed Canyon

So how old is the earth...really?

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CANYON LAKE, Texas — The formation of canyons, done with the flow of water over rock and time, is generally a practice in patience. But not here.

A torrent of water from a bloated Canyon Lake sliced open the earth, exposing rock formations, fossils and even dinosaur footprints in just three days. To protect Canyon Lake Gorge from vandals, it's been open only to researchers since the 2002 flood, but on Saturday, it opens to its first public tour.

"It exposed these rocks so quickly and it dug so deeply, there wasn't a blade of grass or a layer of algae," said Bill Ward, a retired geology professor from the University of New Orleans who started cataloguing the gorge almost immediately after the flood.

The gorge, which emerged where a nondescript valley covered in mesquite and oak trees once was, sits behind a spillway built as a safety valve for Canyon Lake, a popular recreation spot in the Texas Hill Country between San Antonio and Austin.

The reservoir was built in the 1960s to prevent flash flooding along the Guadalupe River and to assure the water supply for central Texas. The spillway, which protects the dam by giving the water an outlet if it gets too high, had never been overrun until July 4, 2002, when 70,000-cubic feet of water flowed through the 1,000-foot gap for three days. It gushed downhill toward the Guadalupe River and scraped the vegetation and topsoil off, leaving only limestone walls.

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