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The Snake River Plain’s 10,000 square
miles of volcanic terrain cover virtually all of southern Idaho. There,
at the northern edge of this vast, rocky region, there is a landscape
that is so unearthly that it is named for another world.
The Craters of the Moon National Monument and Preserve is place of stark
beauty formed by 15,000 years of volcanic eruptions resulting in lava
deposits that cover nearly ½ 1 million acres and are 10,000 feet
deep in places. It is a stony garden of cinder and splatter cones, with
tube-like caves formed by rivers of magma and multi-colored lava formations
with names like Blue and Green Dragon Flows and the Vermillion Chasm.
Craters of the Moon Idaho is also the location of the Great Rift, a
basaltic fissure 62 miles long. This volcanic rift zone is largely responsible
for the appearance of the Monument, as lava has vented through this
and other fissures to flow over the landscape as recently as 2,000 years
ago. |
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