A familiar face will be missing next time you hike the trail that snakes along the edge of the cliffs at Tettegouche State Park: the sea arch, which curved over Lake Superior adjacent to Shovel Point. The oft-photographed arch collapsed sometime between August 20-21. The arch did not fall in response to a specific stimulus, such as stormy waves or a freak Midwestern earthquake—it simply surrendered to erosion and gravity.

“I didn’t know how popular it was,” Park Manager Phil Leversedge was quoted as saying the following week in a Minnesota Public Radio article. “I’ve been on the phone almost nonstop.”

The center of the arch fell, creating an equally dramatic formation sure to capture visitor attention for years to come.

Now, instead of the arch, there is a sea stack—the former outermost pillar of the arch standing alone, apart from but leaning toward the main shoreline.

The craggy, varied shoreline at Tettegouche was formed just over a billion years ago when lava flowed from a rift that stretched from present-day Ontario to Kansas. Eventually the lava hardened, laying down much of Lake Superior’s bedrock as well as forming Shovel Point and Palisade Head. The initial flow plus erosion from wind, water and gravity has sculpted a dramatic landscape popular with hikers, sightseers, photographers and rock climbers.