During the last Ice Age, floodwaters repeatedly rushed across Quincy Basin and down the Columbia River, gouging chunks of basalt from the scabland cliffs and tearing away layer after layer of rock. Some basalt layers resisted the powerful floods better than others. A high, flood-swept basalt layer called the Museum Flow remained after the floods removed the other flows that once rested above it, eroding the basalt down to this more flood-resistant layer. In the Vantage area, floods removed up to 200 feet of basalt and sandstone from above the Museum Flow, and these layers can still be seen in the nearby hills and in the cliffs across the river. Before water behind Wanapum Dam inundated the area in 1963, the old town of Vantage stood in the foreground; Vantage is now located less than a mile south of here, and the bridge was moved to span the Snake River at Lyons Ferry.