List of places with columnar jointed volcanics
Columnar jointed volcanic rocks exist in many places on Earth. Perhaps the most famous basalt lava flow in the world is the Giant's Causeway in Northern Ireland, in which the vertical joints form polygonal columns and give the impression of having been artificially constructed. This may have formed from contractional cooling of basaltic lavas. Notable columnar jointed volcanics. North America. Caribbean United States Mexico Mars. Several exposures of columnar jointing have been discovered on the planet Mars by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera, which is carried by the Mars  Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). Uses. A likely Hindu-origin ancient site at Gunung Padang in West Java, Indonesia was built by horizontally laying basalt columns to form terraces on the slope of a hill and creating open-roofed chambers by erecting vertical columns. A now-ruined thirteenth-century religious complex called Nan Madol was built using columnar basalt quarried from various locations on the island of Pohnpei in Micronesia.