Waterfall to Nowhere: The Mystery of Devil’s Kettle Falls

Leading Theories

Some people think that the Devil’s Kettle leads down to an underground fault line, which could be helping the water flow, unseen from the mouth of the pothole, to the bed of Lake Superior. However, this theory was debunked because the fault line would have to be huge in order to accommodate the flow of half of the Brule River, and would probably have clogged up over time. People have thrown all sorts of debris into the mouth of the Devil’s Kettle to try and figure out where it goes, and these things would’ve either built up in the path of the fault line, or escaped somehow. Since no one can figure out where they’ve escaped to, people have ruled out the fault line theory.

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Another theory that geologists have come up with is that, maybe, the column of water flowing down from the opening of the Devil’s Kettle punched its way into an underground lava tube. A lava tube is a large stone channel that forms when slower-moving lava cools over top of a faster-moving lava stream. Eventually, the faster-moving lava flows away, leaving an empty cave of hardened basalt rock. The largest lava tube in the world is found in Iceland, and is almost 50 feet wide. There is a possibility that the water from the Devil’s Kettle drilled its way into a hidden underground lava tube, but since lava tubes don’t form in rhyolite rock, the chances are very small. Lava tubes are mostly found in basalt rock, and the nearest layer of basalt rock is too far away from the falls for it to have any impact.

The last popular theory is that perhaps a large cave has formed under the earth, and the water from the Devil’s Kettle flows into there. However, underground caves only form in limestone rock, and none of the rock surrounding the falls is limestone.

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