Park History: How Volcanics Sculpted Parts of the National Park System

You forgot to list the Lava Cave Monument in NE California just south of the Oregon border.

How about Devils Postpile National Monument? The basalt columns are the result of a lava flow.

The US Forest Service has two more National Monuments worth mentioning in this context: Newberry National Volcanic Monument and of course Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument.

The BLM has Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument with Pilot Rock, a basalt rock like Devil's Tower, and there are several basalt rocks like that in Upper Missouri River Breaks National Monument. And I probably missed a few ...

You forgot a couple in New Mexico: both Capulin Volcano National Monument and El Malpais National Monument feature volcanic landscapes.

Petroglyph NM contains three small volcanoes too, right at the western park border.

North Cascades National Park in Washington also contains a part of the Cascade range of volcanos.

Hey Kurt-

Could you ask the distinguished professor what his criteria were when he responded to your inquiry? There were obviously some omissions in his reply, as is evidenced by the readers, and I'm quite certain that he did not purposefully intend to mislead anyone into thinking that his was a complete compilation. I'm just curious as to how his determinations were made for the article.

OK, I realize it was just a "highlight film" for volcanic parks, but technically every park on the Hawaiian Islands exists because of volcanism and even the cultural parks are inextricably linked to the volcanoes on which they lived.. moreso in some Hawaiian parks than others, of course. I wouldn't attempt to connect the USS Arizona with volcanism... although... those pesky Japanese pilots sure did come from a volcanic chain of islands across the Pacific, now didn't they?

The massive layers of fish fossils at Fossil Butte are also believed to have been caused by periodic local eruptions which caused massive fish kills in the former Fossil Lake. The potential tangential references are endless!

I don't believe, in my heart of hearts, that anyone was trying to berate or take you to task Coach. Personally, I was, as I stated, just curious about his train of thought. I was thinking perhaps his belief was that these (the items highlighted in the above listing) stood for the most obvious examples within the park system, but then I started recalling a certain excursion over the Lava Falls Rapids, and wondered aloud (I glad there wasn't anyone in the room at the time) how this section of a very well known and studies park wasn't fit for inclusion. In the history of our little corner of the world, dating back to the pre-Cambrian era, and maybe a bit prior, you'd be hard pressed to find some little corner of the continent that is totally devoid of volcanism at some level, so in actuality, the list could be all-inclusive, to some degree. But I think he did a fairly competent job with the major examples, without splitting hairs between the parks, monuments, preserves, etc.

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In 2000, the USGS along with a team of private consultants, performed a new bathymetric survey of the subsurface caldera of Crater Lake. The newest USGS estimate for the maximum depth of Crater Lake is 1949 feet give or take about 6 feet. The average depth is 1148 feet give or take about 3 feet. Crater Lake is the deepest lake in the USA, 2nd in North America, and 8th in the world. More on this subject can be read at http://www.craterlakeinstitute.com/about-us/how-deep-crater-lake.htm

Owen Hoffman
Oak Ridge, TN 37830

There are many dozens of units in the Park System that have landforms of volcanic origin within their borders. As Kurt has already explained, the list he extracted from one of the reading modules for my national parks course was only a sample, not a comprehensive listing. I compiled that sample for my students to show that parks with landforms of volcanic origin are distributed widely, exhibit interesting extrusive and intrusive volcanic features, and do not necessarily have volcanic terms as part of their name.

Actually, I was just refreshed that this was a topic I could talk about without being called names... Really, my love for many of the great parks and my love of geology go hand in hand and I was just enjoying the continuation of the list! Meant no disrespect... I just got excited!

Here's one I wasn't aware of -- from a William and Mary (flat hat) news article today. I assumed anywhere there's continental drift there's a chance for magma and the like, but didn't know these details...

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According to the National Park Service, 1 to 1.2 billion years ago, tectonic plates collided to form the Grenville Mountain range in the area where the Appalachian Mountains now stand.

Around 570 million years ago, tectonic plates moved apart and lava began to flow, erupting at rift zones along the surface. The lava flows that exuded from the rift zones formed the Catoctin Formation, creating broad, rolling plains similar to those found around Big Meadows in the Shenandoah National Park. The original lava flows were originally composed of basalt.

As they metamorphosed, they became richer in chlorite and epidote, and then became greenstones, which cap many peaks in the park. These greenstones produce jagged cliffs composed of very fine grains. The rocks tend to be of a light gray to rusted red color, but if freshly exposed, they appear green.

There's a great arch of pillow basalt on the way to the Pt. Bonita Lighthouse in GGNRA, Sausalito, Ca. And Olympic N.P., west of Seattle, has some near Hurricane Ridge.

The ranger program 'Above the River's Roar' featured lava dams to the Colorado River in Grand Canyon; the tallest was 2,388 feet tall and 84 miles long.

I believe the columns at Devil's Tower are of phonolite.

R.I.P., Eric York.

Jeez, you guys are sharp. Nick is absolutely right that Devil’s Tower consists of phonolite porphyry, not basalt. That’s a good catch, since the distinction is quite important. Differing chemical composition aside, the two rocks aren’t formed the same way and don’t look alike. Porphyritic phonolite is an intrusive igneous rock that is formed from magma that cools relatively slowly below the earth surface. It is lighter- colored, and when formed from magma that begins cooling slowly enough it will have distinctive mineral crystals (phenocrysts) imbedded in a groundmass matrix. Basalt, an extrusive igneous rock that cools quickly on the surface, is fine-grained and also much darker than phonolite. You don’t find big mineral crystals in basalt because the hurry-up cooling process that produces it doesn’t provide enough time for the various molecules in the melt to get together and line up at the leisurely pace needed to form big crystals. A quick glance at Devil’s Tower might lead you to think you’re looking at basalt because the phonolite exhibits columnar jointing similar to that of Devil’s Postpile and many other basalt landforms.

I heard that Devils Tower was created by a giant bear trying to claw its way up the side of the mountain... now who do I believe? Hmmm...

I see you're up to date on the Native American lore Jon. Yup, hunting bears can be a dangerous undertaking. FYI- the would-be hunter lived to tell the tale.

The bigger they are, the harder they claw...

Don't forget Pinnacles National Monument, south of the San Francisco CA area.
From the park's web page:
"Pinnacles National Monument gets its name from rock spires and crags that are remnants of an ancient volcano. The volcano eroded over millions of years as it moved northward along the San Andreas Fault. Rock debris in the form of boulders has weathered and settled, leaving behind spires of volcanic rock and talus caves."

Here's a stretch. Did you know there's evidence of volcanic activity in South Florida's Biscayne National Park? In this land of limestone, you can find pumice on the oceanside shoreline of Elliott Key. Amidst the piles of other marine debris (both natural and unnatural), this floating volcanic rock likely came from Caribbean volcanoes which have erupted over the past several decades.