Moving A Mountain

Many people know that Heart Mountain near Cody, Wyoming served as an internment camp for Japanese Americans during World War II, because the government was worried that those people might still have ties and loyalties to Japan, who was our enemy. While that fact is well known, there are still mysteries surrounding Heart Mountain. The story behind Heart Mountain is a strange one and few people know it all. Heart Mountain actually started out 62 miles from its current location, but it was moved during a volcanic landslide. Many people have said they would “move mountains” for someone, but in Northern Wyoming, the mountain actually moved.

Heart Mountain is an 8,123-foot klippe just north of Cody, Wyoming, rising from the floor of the Bighorn Basin. In geology, a klippe refers to an outlying block of rock that was once part of a larger nappe…a sheet of rock that has been transported over considerable distances along a thrust fault. Rather than being a part of the Absaroka Range, Heart Mountain now lies 62 miles to the east, in the Big Horn Basin. Scientists have been able to confirm that Heart Mountain in Wyoming was once part of the range when it formed 50 million years ago…so what happened? Turns out, it moved those 62 miles away thanks to a volcanic landslide that took place over just about half an hour. That means the entire mountain was moving across the basin at 100 miles per hour.

For years, scientists have puzzled over the mystery of Heart Mountain. The summit rocks are roughly 500 million years old, while those beneath are only about 50 million years old. How could the older rocks end up on top of much younger ones? To find out, geophysicist Einat Aharonov from the Weizmann Institute of Science and Columbia University geologist Mark Anders built a computer model to make sense of the available data. In short, unusual water-filled dikes in Heart Mountain left no room for lava during the volcanic activity that formed the Absaroka Range. When pressure from both water and lava increased, it led to a massive explosion and landslide that sent part of the mountain hurtling across the landscape. There are all kinds of scientific proof that this is what happened but suffice it to say that the easiest on is that when the rocks at the bottom of a mountain are millions of years younger than those of the mountain top there is only one possible explanation. The top was moved somehow.

Of course, exactly when this all to place still remains a mystery. However, at the time of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, the mountain was already in its current location. It was from that expedition that Heart Mountain got its name. In the Crow language, it was called “Bíi ásaalée” or “Buffalo Heart Mountain,” inspired by local legends that saw a heart-like shape in its form. William Clark and George Drouillard, a hunter and guide on the journey, drew from this legend when naming the mountain, but decided to use the English version instead of the original Crow name.