During one week in the summer of 2002, more than 34 inches of rain fell in the upper watershed of the Guadalupe River, setting off a torrent of floodwater that carved a perfectly fascinating geological wonder—the Canyon Lake Gorge—out of the earth.

The flood roared through the Hill Country northwest of New Braunfels, tearing away soil, ripping up huge trees, crumpling houses and sending a rush of water from swollen Canyon Lake over its spillway for the first time since the reservoir was completed in 1964.

The historic flood sliced open the ground below the spillway, creating a gigantic 64-acre Gorge and exposing ancient, cretaceous limestone, fossils and even dinosaur footprints 110 million years old.

It is a textbook example highlighting Hill Country geology and the exposed Trinity Aquifer, clearly showing faults, fractures and seeps in the limestone. Limestone layers created from an ancient sea are visible, and visitors admire waterfalls and springs where the aquifer is exposed.

The Gorge is a real-life classroom in which visitors learn how the aquifer’s underground permeable rock cavities soak up, store, and move rainwater that many in Central Texas depend on for drinking water and irrigation.

Geologists and oil company representatives come to study the faults and fracturing of the Gorge’s limestone.

The Gorge gives tour participants an opportunity to explore dinosaur tracks and perfectly preserved fossils, exposed for the first time in millions of years. Fossilized sea urchins are so perfectly preserved that one can see the spines and the minute seams along the creatures’ bodies. One can even see fossilized ocean ripples in the limestone.