Craters of the Moon National Monument and Preserve

This week's "Record of the Week" features a region of Idaho with an otherworldly landscape. The Craters of the Moon National Monument and Preserve is located in central Idaho in the Snake River Plain in a region averaging 5,900 ft. (1800m) above sea level. 

First established on May 2, 1924, by President Calvin Coolidge, Craters of the Moon National Monument and Preserve now stands under the joint administration of the National Park Service and the Bureau of Land Management. It also occupies Power, Minidoka, Lincoln, Butte, and Blaine counties.  Visitors here will find a fascinating landscape shaped by volcanic activity (and once trained in by NASA astronauts). The area offers a variety of outdoor recreation opportunities such as hiking, wildlife viewing, cross-country skiing, and camping.

The GLO record shown above is a survey plat of Township 1 North, Range 25 East, of the Boise Meridian, Idaho.  The original survey was approved by Frank M. Johnson, Supervisor of Surveys, on January 24, 1931, and accepted on March 28, 1931, by Assistant Commissioner Thomas C. Havell. 

One noteworthy area attraction, visible on the plat above, is characteristic of the landscape: a cinder cone volcano named Crescent Butte. Crescent Butte is currently dormant. It was last active in the Pleistocene era (roughly 2.58 million to 11,700 years ago).  Cinder cones are relatively small compared to other types of volcanoes and are composed of steep sides of loose igneous volcanic debris.  These types of volcanoes tend to have fewer eruptions and a relatively large summit crater.  The volcanoes of Craters of the Moon are all currently dormant, though not extinct.  Although there haven’t been any signs of volcanic activity recently, the area is expected to become active again sometime within the next 1,000 years.

The region has a rich and colorful history.  Though early travelers to the area found a difficult, hostile landscape, one famed explorer, Robert W. Limbert, spearheaded the first comprehensive explorations of the area in the early 20th century.  Local legends described the landscape as resembling the surface of the moon, with some referring to the area as the “Valley of the Moon.”  Limbert would go on to document his experiences in a series of photo essays in various publications, including the National Geographic, in which he referred to the area as “Craters of the Moon,” as it was later designated.   

This picture highlights Beauty Cave, a range from lava tubes (caves in the lava field) to sagebrush steppe grasslands.  Volcanic features of the lava fields were formed along the Great Rift of Idaho, one of the largest cracks in the Earth's crust. Here, there are thousands of acres of fissures, craters and cinder cones, and lava tree molds (hollows in lava formed from incinerated trees). The landscape was shaped and molded by eruptions that started 15,000 years ago with the most recent activity occurring 2,100 years ago.     

Check out a video of Craters of the Moon below from our friends at the National Park Service!