In the early 1940s, due to engineering projects to bring water to Los Angeles, Mono Lake began to dry. Around the periphery of the lake, limestone columns as tall as thirty feet, once submerged, began to gleam in the sun and now form one of the most appreciated resources of the lake, often for photographers.
Mono Lake tufa forms in a few geochemical ways and one includes the life processes of the alkali fly which, by the way, was an important food source for the native persons of the lake, called the Kutzadika’a.
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Tufa is hard, sharp calcium carbonate (limestone) deposit formed in highly alkaline waters, supersaturated with calcite.

The tufa column ascends starkly vertically, revealing the pattern of its growth within the lake water, like a reef. The tufa became visible when the lake waters receded in the 1940s due to diversions of the streams that fed the lake up to that time.

Tufa is formed around the periphery of alkaline lakes under moderate temperature conditions in columns that may reach over 30 feet in height.
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