Sunset Crater
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| This is a picture of Sunset Crater. The trees have made their way about three quarters of the way up the 1,000 foot slope. (We call that “the tenacity of life”.) Now, more from the pamphlet: Sunset Crater, a 900-year-old cinder cone volcano is quite young. Its formation is one of the most recent geologic events on the Colorado Plateau. It erupted along with several other small cinder cones around 1064. Melted rock and gasses pushed up towards the earth’s surface, causing frequent tremors. Like opening a shaken carbonated beverage, gasses violently escaped from the magma when it reached the surface and volcanic fragments called pyroclastics shot upward. A cinder cone grew as the shower of cinders and ash continued off and on until 1090. Later, magma relieved of its gasses flowed from the base of the volcano in the form of lava. In 1250, Sunset Crater coughed out its last cinders, the red cinders at the top that remind many people of the colors in a sunset. (Note: There is a scene of the cone at sunset, in the video that they show in the Visitor Center. In that scene it really looks like red gold.) Sunset Crater Volcano is 1,000 feet high with a diameter at the top of 2,250 feet from rim to rim. The base diameter is 1 mile. The crater is 300 feet deep, and here is a really amazing fact: the ash field coverage from the volcano is approximately 800 square miles. |
