Snake River Plain

The Snake River Plain is a geologic feature located primarily within the U.S. state of Idaho. It stretches about 400 miles westward from northwest of the state of Wyoming to the Idaho-Oregon border. The plain is a wide, flat bow-shaped depression and covers about a quarter of Idaho. Three major volcanic buttes dot the plain east of Arco, the largest being Big Southern Butte.

The Snake River Plain can be divided into three sections: western, central, and eastern. The western Snake River Plain is a large tectonic graben or rift valley filled with several kilometers of lacustrine sediments; the sediments are underlain by rhyolite and basalt, and overlain by basalt. The western plain began to form around 11–12 Ma with the eruption of rhyolite lavas and ignimbrites. The western plain is not parallel to North American Plate motion and lies at a high angle to the central and eastern Snake River Plains. Its morphology is similar to other volcanic plateaus such as the Chilcotin Group in south-central British Columbia, Canada.

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