Kemnather Land

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The Kemnather Land is a fertile landscape in the southwestern part of the Tirschenreuth district near the town of Kemnath . Around a dozen former volcanoes rise here in an almost flat landscape. These basalt cones are the conveyor chimneys of extinct volcanoes. After the actual eruption, this chimney was filled with lava , which remained there and gradually cooled down, allowing the typical columnar shapes to form. The remaining ejecta and the later weathered Keuper layer were removed by erosion, while the relatively hard basalt withstood this for longer. The origins of these volcanic mountains were the Oligocene and the Miocene . The Alps and most of the other high mountains in Europe and Asia also developed during this geologically troubled period .

Basalt columns on the park stone


The most important surveys

Besides these mountains there are a number of smaller volcanic mountains with heights between 500 and 600 meters, some of which are also exploited by basalt quarries .

The most interesting elevation is the Parkstein. There is a beautiful basalt outcrop on the south side of the cone. This basalt formation consists of pentagonal and hexagonal columns up to one meter high , of which individual shafts go up to 30 meters deep into the earth.