The elusive Rare Find

After 3 years of (not so aggressive) searching, we found our (petrified watermelons) . We found them right off the Kingman exit on the way home from Mountain Home. We can cross this one off our list of things to find.

Approximately 15,000 years ago Lake Bonneville, a late Pleistocene lake, suddenly discharged an immense volume of water to the north. This flood is thought to be caused by capture of the Bear River which greatly increased the supply of water to the Bonneville Basin. These flood waters flowed over Red Rock Pass in southeastern Idaho and continued westward across the Snake River Plain generally following the path of the present Snake River. Although this enormous flood was first described in the literature by Gilbert in 1878, Harold Malde (1968) of the U.S. Geological Survey published the first detailed account of the effects of the flood on the Snake River Plain. The name "Bonneville Flood" first appeared in the literature in 1965 (Richmond and others, 1965).

Large rounded boulders of basalt characterize many deposits left by the flood along the Snake River Plain. H. A. Powers, who recognized that these boulders were of catastrophic origin, and Malde applied the name of Melon Gravel to the boulder deposits (Malde and Powers, 1962). They were inspired to use this term after observing a road sign in 1955 that called the boulders "petrified watermelons."