How did Huangguoshu Waterfall come into being?

The genesis of Huangguoshu Waterfall can be traced back to the Middle Triassic more than 200 million years ago, when a set of extremely thick carbonate rocks were deposited in Huangguoshu area.

Huangguoshu Waterfall is developed in a set of "Middle Triassic thick layer with a small amount of thin dolomite limestone", which is located in the east wing of Wengzhai small anticline. Baishui River in the formation period of Huangguoshu Waterfall is an aboveground river, which developed 654.38 million+500,000 years ago and evolved from the "wide valley period" in the middle and late Pleistocene of Quaternary to the "canyon period". Later, due to the intermittent uplift of the crust during the Himalayan movement, the base level of river erosion decreased, which led to the strengthening of river erosion and dissolution.

There is a "crack point" (a big turning point of the river bed due to the uplift of the crust, the decline of the erosion datum level and the influence of structure and lithology), and the cracks, caves and underground rivers at this crack point are very developed. At first, Baishui River formed a karst erosion crack waterfall. Later, with the intermittent uplift of the crust due to river erosion, dissolution and lateral erosion, the hydrodynamic force gradually increased, and the top of the waterfall gradually collapsed, and finally Huangguoshu Waterfall appeared, which has a history of 50,000 years.