Soda Dam in the winter

Just north of the village of Jemez Springs is a geological phenomenon named Soda Dam. It is a hot spring deposit of travertine rock that has been built from carbonated waters issuing from a fault zone. Hot mineral water, coming up along the fault, carried calcium carbonate in solution. When the water cooled at the ground surface, the minerals precipitated to form travertine deposits, which grew over thousands of years to create the structure now known as Soda Dam.