 USA
Arizona National Parks
National parks, monuments, natural reserves, historic sites of Arizona. Pages with photos are indicated with (pictures).
Canyon De Chelly (pictures)
Chinle
Casa Grande Ruins (pictures)
Coolidge
Chiricahua (pictures)
Willcox
Coronado (pictures)
Hereford
Fort Bowie (pictures)
Willcox
Grand Canyon (pictures)
Grand Canyon
Hohokam Pima
Coolidge
Hubbell Trading Post (pictures)
Ganado
Juan Bautista De Anza National Historic Trail
Nogales, AZ to San Francisco, CA
Lake Mead (pictures)
Mojave Desert
Montezuma Castle (pictures)
Camp Verde
Navajo (pictures)
Tonalea
Organ Pipe Cactus (pictures)
Ajo
Petrified Forest (pictures)
Petrified Forest National Park
Pipe Spring (pictures)
Fredonia
Rainbow Bridge
Page
Saguaro
Tucson
Sunset Crater Volcano (pictures)
Flagstaff
Tonto (pictures)
Roosevelt
Tumacácori
Tumacacori
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Sunset Crater Volcano National Monument pictures
Flagstaff, AZ
People must have been warned by tremors and earthquakes before red-hot rocks exploded from the ground and rained down on their pit houses and farmland. Perhaps some stayed to watch as their homes and farmland were buried under slow-moving lava flows. Most fled, taking their possessions with them.
Billowing ash, falling cinders, and forest fires blackened the land and the daytime sky. At night, the horizon glowed fiery red. A large fire fountain, accompanied by lightning and a tremendous roar, could be seen and heard for hundreds of miles. It must have been the loudest noise these people had ever experienced.
When their world again grew quiet, people faced a dramatically altered land. New mountains, including the 1,000-foot-high cinder cone now known as Sunset Crater, stood where open meadows and forests had been. Black cinders blanketed the region.
Life in the shadow of the volcano was changed profoundly and forever. Some people relocated nearby at Walnut Canyon or Wupatki. (Click on “Flagstaff Area National Monuments”)
900 years later, Sunset Crater is still the youngest volcano on the Colorado Plateau. The volcano's red rim and the dark lava flows seem to have cooled and hardened to a jagged surface only yesterday. As plants return, so do the animals that use them for food and shelter. And so do human visitors, intrigued by this opportunity to see nature’s response to a volcanic eruption.
Sunset Crater Volcano National Monument Pictures (NPS)
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