The Palisades (Green River, Wyoming)
Utah
A rockfall here never touched the interstate, but it still shut it down.
On the thirteenth of October, 2010, a slab of cliff let go about two miles west of Green River. The debris stopped short of the travel lanes on Interstate 80. It didn't matter. The impact threw up a cloud of dust so thick that visibility dropped to near zero, and drivers coming through hit a wall of nothing. The chain-reaction crash involved multiple vehicles and closed the interstate for hours. The culprit is water. These cliffs are cut through with vertical cracks, and water seeps in, freezes, and expands, levering slabs away from the rock face a fraction at a time. Wyoming's transportation engineers now fly drones along the wall to map it. What worries them is toppling, where a tall column of sandstone leans slowly outward before it goes.
This is the first of 3 parts. The rest runs about 2 minutes and is read to you as you drive past. Hear the whole piece.
The debris did not reach the travel lanes of Interstate 80, but the impact created a localized dust storm that reduced visibility to near zero.
Written from Wikipedia, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Nearby, on the same roads
- Wilkins Peak 8.4 mi A propane truck with failed brakes rolled into a public radio tower on Wilkins Peak and knocked it flat.
- Rock Springs massacre 14.3 mi At least twenty-eight Chinese miners were killed here in a single afternoon, and no one was ever prosecuted.
- Fort Bridger 49.4 mi A rider carrying letters found the Donner Party on the trail, promising a better road to California and a guide waiting at Fort Bridger.