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Explorers Found “Yellow Brick Road” at Bottom of the Pacific Ocean
Maybe you shouldn't follow this particular Yellow Brick Road.
Back in early 2022, a team of ocean researchers were using a remote exploration robot to study the Liliʻuokalani Ridge within Papahānaumokuakea Marine National Monument. They were exploring the summit of Nootka Seamount near Hawaii when they noticed something unusual among the marine worms and seafloor sediments.
As they turned the vehicle around, they found what appeared to be a road laid out before them, constructed of yellow brick and seemingly leading to some ancient and lost underwater civilization. The formation immediately conjured visions of Oz’s Yellow Brick Road, certain to feature heavily in Universal’s upcoming big screen adaptation of the Broadway musical Wicked.
Where to Find the Pacific Ocean's Yellow Brick Road
The underwater "Yellow Brick Road" has since been identified as a fractured flow of hyaloclastite rock formed during a series of underwater volcanic eruptions. Researchers believe several eruptions in the area formed the apparent road through natural processes. When eruptions happen underwater, these sorts of characteristic 90-degree fractures form through thermal shock and rapid cooling to create what looks like bricks laid out neatly in rows along the seafloor.
In the 1939 movie The Wizard of Oz, a reality-hopping twister drops Dorothy right on top of the Yellow Brick Road, and her adventure starts there. In L. Frank Baum’s 1900 novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Dorothy is deposited elsewhere and has to find the Yellow Brick Road before her journey can begin. But explorers with Ocean Exploration Trust stumbled on an underwater piece of the Yellow Brick Road seemingly by accident.
The Yellow Brick Road is one of the most iconic features of Baum's novel and its famed 1939 Hollywood adaptation, thanks in part to the invention of Technicolor. Dorothy (Judy Garland) first encounters it in the land of Oz, and it leads her to the titular wizard. On Earth, they say that all roads lead to Rome, but in Oz, all roads, at least the ones paved with yellow brick, lead to the Emerald City.
Baum likely took inspiration for the fantastical thoroughfare from the yellow brick streets in Holland, Michigan, where Baum spent time growing up. Today, you can find a memorial Yellow Brick Road in Humboldt Park where Baum once lived. It celebrates the very place where Baum penned his fantastical stories and serves as a bridge between our world and a world where monkeys fly and witches duel.
That the underwater Yellow Brick Road was built by mother nature and not a wizard shouldn’t make it any less magical. In fact, there’s something even more fascinating about the idea of a road laid down not by Munchkin construction workers in a faraway realm, but by fire, water, and time, right here on Earth.
See Wicked in theaters everywhere November 22. Get tickets now!
