Chiricahua Hoodoos

The Chiricahua hoodoos are a dense field of standing rock spires, columns and balanced rocks within Chiricahua National Monument in southeastern Arizona, carved from a thick sheet of rhyolitic volcanic tuff deposited by the eruption of the Turkey Creek Caldera roughly 27 million years ago, one of the more voluminous known eruptions in the region. As the welded tuff cooled it fractured into a dense network of vertical joints, and subsequent weathering, including water erosion and freeze-thaw cycles, widened those joints and sculpted the rock between them into thousands of narrow standing pillars and precariously balanced boulders. The formation's maze-like landscape of spires has given the monument its popular nickname, the "Wonderland of Rocks."