Qualla: Sunset Crater

Sunset Crater: Introduction

Wed, 28 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Oleg Alexandrov, CC BY-SA 4.0. In 1928, the Famous Players-Lasky Corporation planned to blow up the side of a volcano. The Hollywood studio wanted a real avalanche for a Zane Grey western, and Sunset Crater - a rust-and-charcoal cinder cone rising north of Flagstaff, Arizona - looked like the perfect expendable backdrop. Public outrage stopped the explosives, and two years later President Herbert Hoover proclaimed the crater a national monument. It was an early lesson in what happens when spectacle collides with geology: the mountain that Hollywood wanted to destroy for a forgettable film turned out to be the youngest volcano in a field of six hundred, a place where the earth last split open less than a thousand years ago.

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Image: Oleg Alexandrov | CC BY-SA 4.0

Sunset Crater: The Night the Earth Opened

Wed, 28 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Alan Levine from Mortlach, Canada, CC0. Around AD 1085, a fissure tore open the landscape northeast of what is now Flagstaff. The eruption that followed reached a Volcanic Explosivity Index of 4 - Sub-Plinian in scale - sending an eruption column 20 to 30 kilometers into the sky. Lava poured from the largest vent in tw...

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Image: Alan Levine from Mortlach, Canada | CC0

Sunset Crater: Fire and Ice at the Base

Wed, 28 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Oleg Alexandrov, CC BY-SA 4.0. The Bonito Lava Flow sprawls across the base of Sunset Crater like a black, frozen river. Walk the trail that skirts its edge and the hardened lava looks startlingly fresh - jet-black rock that devastated the forest in its path and has barely weathered in nine centuries. The flow...

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Image: Oleg Alexandrov | CC BY-SA 4.0

Sunset Crater: A Volcano's Afterlife

Wed, 28 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Šarūnas Burdulis from USA, CC BY-SA 2.0. Sunset Crater Volcano National Monument is managed by the National Park Service alongside nearby Wupatki National Monument, the two sites connected by a scenic loop road. A visitor center near the park entrance on U.S. Highway 89 introduces the volcanic geology of the region. In ...

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Image: Šarūnas Burdulis from USA | CC BY-SA 2.0