Climbing up the plateau behind Cape Soya, you will see the gently rolling hills that characterize the Wakkanai mountain range. This "rolling" terrain, ranging in height from 20 to 200 meters, with rounded ridgelines and dendritic valleys, is said to be one of the "periglacial landforms".

In the Wakkanai area, as the soil repeatedly froze and thawed and then froze and thawed again, a drift phenomenon occurred on the slopes, gouging out the soil on top of the slopes and piling it up in the valleys below, creating small valleys with gentle ridges and slopes. This was formed during the Ulm Ice Age, the last glacial period on earth, which occurred 20,000 to 10,000 years ago.

Such "periglacial landforms" were formed everywhere in Hokkaido, but the landscape has been lost to development, and it is the Soya Hills where the beautiful landforms can still be seen today.

Until the middle of the Meiji period (1868-1912), the entire area of the hills was covered with dense forests, but due to a series of forest fires, the area is now entirely covered with pasture lands and grasslands of the Cape Soya Ranch. The Soya Hills, where visitors can enjoy a "landscape that looks as if it were not in Japan," were designated as a Hokkaido Heritage Site in 2004.