Qualla: Amboy Crater

Amboy Crater: Introduction

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Wilson44691, Public domain. The lava field surrounding Amboy Crater covers 70 square kilometers of the Mojave Desert floor — black basalt spread across the pale sand like a stain, still sharp-edged in places where the rock cooled too fast to weather smooth. The volcano that made it is dormant, its last eruption estimated at roughly 10,000 years ago. Inside the crater, a solidified lava lake fills the bowl that was once open to the sky. It looks, from above, like a place where the planet was thinking hard about something and then changed its mind.

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Image: Wilson44691 | Public domain

Amboy Crater: What the Lava Field Is

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Original: Dietmar Rabich (Derivative work: Missvain), CC BY-SA 4.0. Amboy Crater is a cinder cone — a roughly symmetrical hill built from the loose fragments of solidified lava that a volcano ejects. The field around it formed from successive lava flows that spread across the desert floor over thousands of years of intermittent activity. The flow...

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Image: Original: Dietmar Rabich (Derivative work: Missvain) | CC BY-SA 4.0

Amboy Crater: Hollywood Goes Underground

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit blmcalifornia, Public domain. In 1959, a film crew working on Journey to the Center of the Earth needed to simulate the appearance of an underground volcanic landscape. Amboy Crater was their solution. The production team lit fires inside the crater to create visual effects that would read, on screen, as the ...

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Image: blmcalifornia | Public domain

Amboy Crater: The Astronauts Who Trained Here

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Steve Berardi from Long Beach, CA, United States, CC BY-SA 2.0. Before Apollo 15's crew flew to the Moon in 1971, they flew over Amboy Crater. NASA used overflights of volcanic features in the American West to train astronauts in geological observation — teaching them to identify rock types, estimate ages, and describe landforms in the precis...

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Image: Steve Berardi from Long Beach, CA, United States | CC BY-SA 2.0

Amboy Crater: The Crater Today

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Joshua Tree National Park, Public domain. The Bureau of Land Management administers Amboy Crater as part of the larger Mojave Trails National Monument, designated in 2016. A trail leads from the parking area across the lava field to the crater rim, crossing basalt that crunches underfoot and catches the heat of the deser...

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Image: Joshua Tree National Park | Public domain