The tuff cone of Table Rock, by the shores of the dry Silver Lake in central Oregon, started out as a maar, where magma intruded into water and triggered explosive eruptions. Its cone of tuff rose higher than usual, enough to briefly escape the influence of water, and filled with a lava lake. Erosion took away the sides of the crater, revealing the large basalt dikes in the foreground and elsewhere, and the center of the lava cap remained, turning what was a crater bottom into a mountaintop. Geologists can study this butte and visualize the larger tuff cone that once stood here.
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