Earth_Magazine_October_2017

Terri Cook and Lon Abbott

W

hen it comes to U.S. volcanoes,

most people think of Hawaii,

Alaska, or Mount St. Helens and

Mount Rainier in the Pacific

Northwest. Ask them about Arizona, and images

of the Grand Canyon, red rock deserts and sagua-

ros baking in the sun probably come to mind. But

Arizona also hosts an impressive volcanic field. Near

the outdoorsy college town of Flagstaff in northern

Arizona, more than 600 mounds and mountains —

every one of them a volcano in the San Francisco

Volcanic Field — are sprinkled across the high

plateau on which the town is perched. Few places

in the country exhibit so many types of volcanic

features, including jagged lava flows, crumbly cinder

cones and the remnants of a towering stratovolcano,

in such a compact region. This great diversity led

NASA to select the area as a training ground for the

Apollo astronauts in the 1960s and ‘70s. But Flag-

staff’s cones and craters, and the region’s spectacular

scenery, also offer non-astronauts an out-of-this-

world experience.

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Located on the southwestern edge of the Colorado

Plateau, Flagstaff sits at nearly 2,100 meters elevation.

Approaching the town of 70,000 from any direction

entails a gradual climb of at least 1,000 meters,

from parched plains and pinyon-juniper forest to

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Cones and Craters in Flagstaff, Arizona

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