Sunset Crater Volcano and Capulin Volcano national monuments: Discovering Lava in the Southwest

Expanding my understanding of North America’s volcanic history beyond the West Coast’s Ring of Fire.

 Sunset Crater from the Lava Flow Trail

I grew up in Oregon in the shadow of the Ring of Fire (not the Johnny Cash song).  It is a gigantic horseshoe of volcanos stretching up the west coast of North and South America to Alaska (where I live now), out the Aleutian chain to Russia, and south to Japan and the Philippines – ringing the Pacific ocean.  I was dusted with ash when Mt. Saint Helens blew and I hiked in Cascade mountain Wilderness areas named for volcanos – Mt. Washington, Mt. Jefferson and Three Sisters.  As a child, I traveled with my grandparents to see the grandest of them all – Crater Lake, the caldera of ancient Mount Mazama and Oregon’s only National Park.  Volcanos are part of my life and are integral to the landscape of the west coast and Alaska.  So when my quest to visit all the national park units took me to Sunset Crater Volcano National Monument in Arizona and Capulin Volcano National Monument in New Mexico, I was fascinated to learn about some non-Ring of Fire volcanos in the American southwest.

My girlfriend Craig and I visited Sunset Crater, located about 15 miles north of Flagstaff off Highway 89, on a sunny October day.  We were traveling with our Alto trailer and thought we’d camp at Bonito, a Forest Service campground a couple miles from Sunset’s Visitor Center.  Unfortunately it was closed, the operating months being “late spring through early fall.”  There were plenty of RVs cruising the highway looking for a place to spend the night, but some budget cruncher at the Forest Service decided that closing campgrounds in September was the “best management practice.”  Bummer for us as we ended up at a semi-urban KOA in Flagstaff, not our first choice of a place to spend the night.  But we got a shower out of the deal and were up and out early the next morning to the Visitor Center where we learned why there are volcanos in Arizona.

It seems there is some kind of localized “hot spot” deep within the earth in this part of northern Arizona.  As the massive North American Plate moves slowly over the "hot spot," periodic eruptions over the past 6 million years pushed through the plate and created a string of volcanos stretching about 50 miles east from Williams, AZ to Sunset Crater, the youngest volcano in the San Francisco Volcanic Field.  There are over 600 identified volcanos in the field, named after its largest, San Francisco Peak.   

The National Park Service was tasked by President Herbert Hoover with protecting Sunset Crater after a Hollywood film company proposed blowing up one side of the crater to create a rock landslide for a Zane Grey movie titled Avalanche, a silent movie of which a copy no longer exists.  Local outcry stopped the explosion and led to President Hoover using the Antiquities Act to create the National Monument in 1930.  

                                                              Craig deep in the lava on the Lava Flow Trail

 Historically you could hike the 1,000 feet elevation gain to the top of Sunset Crater, but erosion damage from hikers caused the Park Service to close the trail in 1973.  You can still see the trail scar.  Even though climbing Sunset Crater is not an option, the paved beginning of the one-mile Lave Flow Trail gives you good Crater views before it drops into the heart of the lava field. You are literally walking inside the lava flow as the trail winds around and through piles of what was once molten rock.  The Park Service has done a good job with the signage that interprets what you are seeing.  As an alternative to climbing Sunset Crater, the Park Service has built a trail to the top of the neighboring, 300 foot high Lenox Crater, giving you the sense of what it’s like to hike up a cinder cone.

There is ongoing debate about exactly when the volcano first erupted and for how long.  Initial research in the late 1950s pegged the eruption to 1065 and speculated that it could have lasted for up to 200 years.  Recent research suggests the eruption started in 1085 and lasted just a few years.  In either case, there were people living in the area before and after the eruption and you can visit their most recent homes a few miles down the road at the Wupatki Pueblo in Wupatki National Monument.  

One can only imagine what it must have been like to wake up one morning to a volcano erupting a couple dozen miles away, raining ash on you and your crops and home.  After the eruptions, people moved back into the region and started farming again on soils that were enriched from volcanic ash. But as with many of the native peoples in the southwest, they had permanently moved on by 1250 or so, leaving only their homes behind. 

Another geologic “hot spot” on the North American Plate is the Raton-Clayton Volcanic Field in northeastern New Mexico, home of Capulin Volcano National Monument.  Capulin and the surrounding lands were first withdrawn “from settlement, entry or other disposition” in 1891 because it was such a perfect specimen of a volcano.  President Woodrow Wilson created the Monument in 1916 and Congress expanded the acreage in 1962 in order to preserve the volcanos’ “scenic and scientific integrity.”  Capulin volcano was a landmark for travelers on the Santa Fe Trail and discoveries at nearby archeological sites helped determined that humans have been in the region for at least 10,000 years.

                                                  Beginning of the trail around the rim of Capulin Volcano

Craig and I visited Capulin last December and based out of Raton, New Mexico, the nearest town.  We stayed at a very nice, affordable and locally owned motel, The Raton Pass Inn. It is within walking distance of Raton’s historic downtown, which includes the Colfax Ale Cellar where I added several local beers to my ever growing beer list. Raton is also near Philmont Scout Ranch where I worked one summer in high school, so this was a bit of a “memory lane” trip as well. 

From Raton, it is a short 30 mile drive on highway 64/87 to Capulin.  It was sunny, but cold and a bit windy when we rolled into the Visitor Center parking lot.  Not the ideal time to visit, but we did have the place almost to ourselves.   Unlike Sunset Crater, there is a paved road to the top of this volcano.  The road was initially constructed with a mule-drawn plow and was completed in 1925.  The Civil Works Project in the 1930s provided additional labor to widen and maintain the road, which includes some outstanding rock embankments reminding me of work done in the 1930s by the Civilian Conservation Corps.  When I inquired about who did the rockwork, I was told it was done in the 1980s, a recent example of fine rock craftsmanship you seem to only find in National Parks.  

 View from the top of Capulin Volcano towards Rabbit Ears Mt. and Johnson Mesa

Capulin is a much older geologic structure than Sunset, having erupted some 60,000 years ago.  Rising 1,300 feet from the surrounding plains, the 360 degree view from the top includes the four lava fields that flowed from Capulin and numerous other volcanic features including Robinson Peak, Rabbit Ears Mountain and Johnson Mesa.  These views are best seen from the one mile loop trail through the pinyon pine and around the rim of the crater.  The view makes this is one of the best short hikes I’ve done in all of the park system and the Park Service has done a great job of interpreting what you see in a series of panels at the mountaintop parking lot.  There is also a short trail that drops down into the crater’s bottom.  Even in a howling December wind, the hike was totally worth it.  

There are a couple of other trails, leaving from the visitor center and taking you into the heart of the lava fields.  I’ve hiked numerous lava fields in my day, so we passed on those trails.  But if you are new to volcanos, these trails looked like a great introduction to lava flows and geologic features like lava lakes and lava tubes.

It turns out that volcanos are much more common in the Southwest than I would have imagined.  Besides the two explored in this little essay, the Park Service hosts three other volcanic features in New Mexico alone at El Malpais National Monument, Valles Caldera National Preserve and Petroglyph National Monument.  All are well worth a visit. Expanding my understanding of volcanos beyond the Ring of Fire is just another reason why I visit and so deeply appreciate our national park system.

Fredericksburg, Petersburg, & Richmond: Experiencing Civil War Battlefields

We spend three days immersed in civil war battlefields and their connections to local communities.

Growing up in the Pacific Northwest, I learned about the Civil War through books, movies, and plastic action figures. There just weren’t any battlefields in Oregon for a ten-year-old to experience first-hand. So, when I started traveling east, I was drawn to iconic battlefields like Gettysburg and Antietam. Until I started my quest to visit all the national park units, I had no idea of the sheer number of battlefields or how integrated into local communities they were and still are.

Heading south out of Washington, D.C., my girlfriend Craig and I recently did a sweep through Civil War battlefields in and around the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia. I had heard of Fredericksburg, Petersburg, Richmond, Spotsylvania, and Chancellorsville, but hadn’t realized these battles were all in Virginia, were relatively close together, and represented the action on the southern end of the D.C.-Richmond corridor.  Here, Confederate and Union troops see-sawed back and forth over the course of the war as generals on both sides tried to take each other's capital.  

Basing out of Richmond, we started our three-day Civil War adventure at the Fredericksburg visitor center to learn all we could about Fredericksburg’s four local battlefields (Fredericksburg, Spotsylvania, Chancellorsville, and The Wilderness).  Exploring some parks is possible without a visitor center orientation, but I cannot imagine trying to understand all that went on at these battlefields without first seeing the movie, studying the dioramas, reading the exhibit narratives, and securing the driving tour guides.  

There are driving guides to the four Fredericksburg battles and we spent the best part of a day exploring them all.  Be sure and spend some time at the Chancellorsville visitor center and take the short walk to where General Stonewall Jackson, in the confusion of the battle, was mortally wounded by his own soldiers.  Take the time to walk some of the fields where union and confederate soldiers crashed into each other.  Look at the battles from the artillery perspective.  The Park Service has placed cannons in many places to help us imagine how integral they were to winning some of these fights.  It’s all there for you to check out, so be sure and give yourself enough time.

 

Stratton House.  NPS photo

And pay close attention to the exhibits in all the visitor centers, you never know what kind of personal connection you might find.  You can imagine my surprise when one of the Fredericksburg exhibits told the story of the “Stratton House,” a solidly built brick structure that provided safe haven to wounded Union soldiers because, unlike the predominately wooden houses in the area, it didn’t get blown to bits during the battle. It is still being lived in and is on the National Register of Historic Places. I shared this possible distant relative with my sister who maps the Stratton family genealogy and she is researching the family connection. So in addition to new Park Passport stamps, I may have added to Stratton family history!

What really struck me about the Fredericksburg Battlefield is its location relative to the local community. The Stratton House, which served as a battlefield hospital 150 years ago, is now in a neighborhood that could be Anytown, USA. So, in addition to visiting the park units, we also wanted to explore the local communities in and around these battlefields … and nothing beats going local like AirBnB or locally owned Bed and Breakfasts. They can connect you to the local community in ways you would never expect. For example, our AirBnB host in Richmond, who rents his place when he travels, requested that should we run into the actual owner of the apartment where we were staying, to please say we were friends of his girlfriend’s parents so his landlord wouldn’t know he was renting out his place. You just don’t get to participate in that kind of conspiracy at a Holiday Inn! 

Meals are another community connection. Our Richmond apartment was located near Virginia Commonwealth University, in close proximity to some really fine eating establishments that featured local beers and locally sourced food, two more windows into the Virginia culture. I can recommend beers from Starr Hill, Devil’s Backbone, and Blue Mountain breweries. And while stocking up at the neighborhood grocer, the store’s bulletin board alerted us to an upcoming Bar-B-Cue competition at the county fairgrounds, which we ate our way through later in the week.  

We spent our second day working through many of the 13 units that make up the Richmond National Battlefield Park.  The Tredegar Visitor Center in Richmond is a good place to start.  It is in a civil war era building that was one of the confederacy’s most important ironworks.  It is a great old building that tells the stories of the four major campaigns that were fought in/around Richmond.  There are several driving tours available to Richmond area battlefields.

Statue of President Lincoln and his son Tad at Tredegar Visitor Center commemorating his visit to Richmond in 1865

The most interesting site for us in Richmond was at Chimbaroza on the site of one of the Confederacy’s largest hospitals.  The medical stories told in the visitor center/museum, located in an urban setting just south of downtown, were fascinating.  We learned how nurses washing wounds and changing bandages noticed that patients farther down the row of beds suffered more infections and higher mortality than those at the beginning of the row. Through observation, they determined that fresh water for each patient greatly decreased the rate of infection.   Yes, they had been using one bucket of water to treat dozens of patients.  Seems common sense to us, but it was a revelation in the 1860s.  

On our last day we went to Petersburg and learned about the failed Union effort to utilize a gap blown in the confederate defenses caused by a tunnel dug under the confederate lines and filled with dynamite.  The explosion worked and the huge crater is still there for you to see, but when union troops moved into the crater rather than around it as they charged the confederate lines, they became like fish in a barrel for confederate soldiers.  It took another eight months of siege warfare before Petersburg ultimately fell to union troops.

                                        Portal to one of the tunnels dug at Petersburg

As we hiked around the many sites associated with the Fredericksburg, Richmond, and Petersburg battlefields, we marveled at not only the remnants of military fortifications (trenches, fox holes and earthen berms) but also structures, like the Stratton House, the Richmond Ironworks and the location of the Chimbaroza Hospital, that help you imagine what the battlefield landscape was like 150 years ago. Homesteads, farms, stores, churches, and villages were integral players in these battles, by choice or not, providing cover, officer quarters, and hospitals for nearly every engagement. 

Many of these very same communities are still integral to the battlefields today. So as you explore Civil War battlefields, whether iconic or lesser known, don’t forget to check in with the locals.