A man-made geyser in Nevada grew by accident into a rainbow tower of minerals

In the high desert of northern Nevada, on a stretch of private ranch land north of the town of Gerlach, a cluster of vivid red and green mineral cones spits scalding water several feet into the air. From a distance the formation looks like something engineered by an artist or grown on another planet, yet it exists because of a mistake. Fly Geyser was not carved by nature over eons but set in motion by a drilling rig, and it has been building itself ever since. The tallest cone now stands roughly five feet high, and the wider mound and terraces spread across a far larger footprint.

An accident born from a drilling rig

The land around the geyser sits over a pocket of geothermally heated water, and people have been punching wells into it for more than a century. A first well drilled in 1916 by settlers looking for irrigation water tapped water so hot it was useless for crops, and it was abandoned, leaving behind an early mineral spout. The formation that draws visitors today traces to a second effort in 1964, when an energy company drilling a geothermal test well struck the same superheated reservoir. According to historical accounts of the site, that well was either left uncapped or plugged improperly, and pressurized water forced its way to the surface and never stopped.

How minerals built a rainbow tower

Once the hot water reached open air, chemistry took over. The water is rich in dissolved calcium carbonate, the same mineral that forms travertine and limestone, and as it cooled and evaporated at the surface it left thin deposits behind. Layer by layer those deposits hardened into mounds that have kept rising, reportedly by several inches a year, until they became the multiple cones seen today. The startling colors are not from the minerals alone. Thermophilic algae, microbes that thrive in near-boiling water, coat the wet rock in shades of red and green, while iron and other minerals streak the terraces with orange and yellow. The result is a living, growing sculpture kept perpetually damp by the water sheeting down its sides.

A private wonder now tied to Burning Man

For decades Fly Geyser sat on private ranch land and was visible mainly from a distance across a locked fence beside a state highway, which only deepened its mystique among travelers passing through the Black Rock Desert. That changed in 2016, when the nonprofit Burning Man Project purchased the roughly 3,800-acre property, known as Fly Ranch, that surrounds the geyser. The organization, best known for the annual gathering held nearby, has since opened the land to limited guided walks that allow small groups to see the formation up close while protecting the fragile mineral terraces from damage.

Why it keeps growing

The geyser endures because the underground plumbing that created it has never been sealed. Geothermal pressure continues to push heated, mineral-laden water up through the old well, and every drop that reaches the surface adds a trace of new stone before it evaporates or runs off into the surrounding wetland. That constant supply is why the cones remain wet, colorful and slowly enlarging rather than drying into dead rock. As regional tourism officials note, the surrounding area also holds smaller geothermal pools and features fed by the same hot aquifer, making the geyser the centerpiece of a broader thermal landscape.

An unintended monument

Fly Geyser sits alongside a small class of famous landmarks that people did not mean to build, accidental byproducts of drilling, mining or industry that nature then reshaped into something striking. Its appeal lies partly in that contradiction: it looks utterly alien and untouched, but every terrace is the cumulative record of water escaping a botched well and depositing minerals for decades. Left to itself, and as long as the geothermal reservoir keeps feeding it, the formation will simply keep climbing, adding new layers of colored stone to a monument no one set out to create.

This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.

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