Eternal Flame Falls, Orchard Park, New York

Eternal Flame Falls is a 30 ft high cascade in two segments. The top is a narrow cascade of nearly 8 ft high. The second tier spreads out more than twice the width as it cascades over shale. A small grotto to the right houses a natural gas spring that can be ignited to create a flame of 4-8 inches in height. Two small cascades can be found upstream from Eternal Flame.

Behind the cascade of a small waterfall in the Shale Creek Preserve section of Chestnut Ridge Park in suburban Buffalo, New York, you might see what appears to be an optical illusion: a flickering golden flame. Actually, you'll smell it before you see it, and amazingly, it's real, fueled by what geologists call a macroseep of natural gas from the Earth below.

A geological fault in the shale allows about 1 kilogram of methane gas per day to escape to the surface, where, at some point, possibly the early 20th century, a visitor had the idea to set it alight. The water occasionally extinguishes the flame, but there's always another hiker with a lighter to reignite it.