50 Fun Facts About Hawaii Volcanoes National Park

Which two active volcanoes lie within Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park?

Kīlauea and Mauna Loa are the park's two active volcanoes: Kīlauea is among the most active on Earth, and Mauna Loa is the world's largest active volcano, rising some 30,000 feet from the seafloor.

What does the name Kīlauea mean in Hawaiian, a nod to how often it erupts?

Kīlauea means 'much spreading' or 'spewing', a fitting name since lavas younger than 1,000 years cover about 90 percent of its surface.

Mauna Loa's name translates as what?

Mauna Loa means 'long mountain', apt for a shield volcano whose gentle slopes hold an estimated 18,000 cubic miles of rock and stretch about 75 miles from end to end.

How high is the summit of Mauna Loa?

Mauna Loa's summit stands 13,679 feet (4,169 meters) above sea level; the park runs from the coast to that summit, from rainforest to bare alpine lava.

Kīlauea's summit crater Halemaʻumaʻu is traditionally regarded as the home of which deity?

Halemaʻumaʻu is held to be the home of Pele, the volcano goddess; offerings are left at the crater rim, and strands and droplets of volcanic glass are named Pele's hair and Pele's tears.

When it was created in 1916, the park also included which volcano on another island?

Hawaii National Park originally took in Haleakalā on Maui as well as the Big Island volcanoes; it was split into two separate parks in 1961.

Which president signed the 1916 bill creating the park?

Woodrow Wilson signed the act creating Hawaii National Park on August 1, 1916, the first national park in a US territory; he signed the law creating the National Park Service itself on August 25 that year.

Which newspaper owner and hotel investor was the driving force behind creating the park?

Lorrin A. Thurston, publisher of the Honolulu Advertiser and an investor in the crater-rim hotel, campaigned in print for the park from 1906 and lobbied Congress until the bill passed in 1916.

Which Buffalo Soldier regiment built the park's first trails and infrastructure from 1915 to 1917?

Soldiers of the all-Black 25th Infantry Regiment, stationed at Schofield Barracks, built the trail from Kīlauea to Mauna Loa's summit in 1915, breaking lava with 12-pound hammers and packing it in gunny sacks.

Who were the first Western visitors to reach Kīlauea, in 1823?

Missionaries William Ellis and Asa Thurston, on a tour around the island, reached the crater rim in August 1823; Ellis wrote that they 'stopped and trembled', struck mute by the fiery abyss below.

What is the only hotel located inside the park?

Volcano House is the only hotel inside the park; hotels of that name have stood on the crater rim since a grass shelter of 1846, and the current building dates from 1941.

Which famous author stayed at the crater-rim hotel and described the volcano in Roughing It?

Mark Twain visited Kīlauea in June 1866 as a newspaper correspondent and stayed at the crater-rim hotel; his account of walking across the glowing crater floor by night appears in Roughing It (1872).

In 1790 a party of warriors was caught in an explosive eruption; what trace of them can still be seen?

The 1790 Footprints site is on the National Register of Historic Places; explosive eruptions like that one are rare at Kīlauea.

Who founded the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory and directed it from 1912 to 1940?

Thomas Jaggar, an MIT geologist with a Harvard doctorate, was shaken by the 1902 Mont Pelée disaster in Martinique and founded the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory on Kīlauea's rim in 1912, directing it until 1940.

Which federal agency runs the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory?

The US Geological Survey has run the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory since 1947, one of its five volcano observatories; HVO monitors six Hawaiian volcanoes, including the submarine Kamaʻehuakanaloa.

Kīlauea's eastern rift zone eruption ran nearly continuously from 1983 until which year?

The eruption ended in 2018, when the rift's magma drained into the lower Puna outbreak; in its 35 years it buried Kalapana and Kaimū in 1990 and was the longest East Rift eruption in at least 500 years.

What is the name of the cinder cone that grew on Kīlauea's east rift during the 1983-2018 eruption?

Puʻu ʻŌʻō, 'hill of the digging stick', was named by Kalapana elders; scientists had first called the vent Puʻu O because it rose near the letter O in a map label.

How many homes did Hawaii County report destroyed in the 2018 lower Puna eruption?

Hawaii County counted 716 dwellings destroyed: 24 fissures fed lava rivers that buried Kapoho and Vacationland, reached the sea and boiled away Green Lake, the state's largest natural lake.

What happened at Kīlauea's summit during the 2018 eruption?

As magma drained to lower Puna, the Halemaʻumaʻu lava lake drained away and the crater collapsed in 62 step-like events, deepening it by over 1,600 feet; ash blasts reached 30,000 feet and the Kīlauea section closed for months.

What appeared in the bottom of Halemaʻumaʻu in summer 2019, never before seen there in recorded history?

A water lake, first spotted in July 2019, pooled at the bottom of Halemaʻumaʻu and grew to about 160 feet deep before the December 2020 eruption boiled it away and began refilling the crater with lava.

After what gap did Mauna Loa erupt again in November 2022?

Mauna Loa's November 2022 eruption ended a gap of about 40 years (38 to be exact): the previous one, in 1984, sent lava within four miles of Hilo, and the 2022 event lasted about two weeks.

Mauna Loa's summit caldera is called Mokuʻāweoweo, named for what?

Mokuʻāweoweo takes its name from the ʻāweoweo, a red fish whose colour recalled the caldera's glowing eruptions; the caldera is about three miles long and up to 600 feet deep.

The 1959 eruption of Kīlauea Iki produced a lava fountain of roughly what height, a Hawaiian record?

The five-week eruption filled the pit crater with a lava lake whose crusted floor visitors now hike across; it is still cooling and shrinking.

Which paved park path crosses the cinder-buried rainforest destroyed by the 1959 Kīlauea Iki fountains?

Devastation Trail is a paved half-mile path through the pumice and cinder that the 1959 fountains dumped on dense rainforest; the fallout built the cone Puʻu Puaʻi beside it.

What is the Hawaiian name of the park's popular walk-through lava tube, long called Thurston Lava Tube?

Nāhuku, meaning 'the protuberances' after the lava drips that once hung from its ceiling, formed roughly 500 years ago; visitors walk its lit section through tree-fern rainforest on the crater's east side.

How long is the Chain of Craters Road, which winds from the East Rift down to the coast?

Chain of Craters Road runs 19 miles and drops 3,700 feet from the rift zone's string of pit craters to the coast at Hōlei Sea Arch; lava from Kīlauea's decades-long East Rift eruption repeatedly buried its lower end.

How big is Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park?

The park covers about 354,000 acres after the 2003 Kahuku and 2022 Pōhue Bay additions; well over 100,000 acres have been designated wilderness since 1978, and the park runs from sea level to Mauna Loa's summit.

The 2003 purchase of the Kahuku Ranch, Hawaii's largest land acquisition, enlarged the park by what share?

The 115,788-acre Kahuku Ranch, bought in 2003 for $21.9 million from the Samuel Mills Damon estate with Nature Conservancy financing, enlarged the park by 56 percent.

In which year did UNESCO list the park as a World Heritage Site?

UNESCO inscribed Hawaiʻi Volcanoes as a World Heritage Site in 1987, citing its two of the world's most active volcanoes and the ongoing island-building they display.

The park was depicted on a coin in 2012 as part of which US Mint series?

The Hawaiʻi Volcanoes quarter was the 14th design in the America the Beautiful Quarters series (2010-2021), which honoured a national site in every state and territory; it shows lava erupting at Kīlauea.

What arid area on Kīlauea's southwest side contrasts with the park's rainforests?

The Kaʻū Desert lies southwest of Kīlauea's summit, downwind of its vents, where sulphurous acid rain and ash keep vegetation sparse; it is not a true desert, since it gets roughly a metre of rain a year.

The March 2008 explosion in Halemaʻumaʻu was the first explosive event there since which year?

The March 19, 2008 blast was Halemaʻumaʻu's first explosive event since the May 1924 eruptions, which had hurled blocks and killed one man; it scattered debris over about 75 acres and damaged the overlook.

Which anonymous panel chose Arthur Johnsen's 2003 painting of the volcano goddess for the visitor center?

An anonymous panel of Native Hawaiian elders picked Arthur Johnsen's entry in the 2003 competition; his goddess holds a digging stick in one hand and the egg that hatched her sister Hiʻiaka in the other.

The 1929 painting of Pele that hung in the visitor center for four decades was criticised for what?

D. Howard Hitchcock painted it; his son donated it in 1966 and it was swapped out in 2005.

What rule does the Hawaiian principle of pono ask visitors to Hawaii Volcanoes to follow?

Pono, living rightly and in balance, is invoked to ask visitors not to take lava rocks or sand, which Hawaiians regard as part of the volcano goddess's body; rangers also help revive traditions from canoe-making tools to gourd drums.

Pōhue Bay, added to the park in 2022, holds Hawaii's largest recorded quarry for what?

Pōhue Bay's 16,451 acres, donated through the Trust for Public Land in 2022, hold Hawaii's largest recorded quarry for abrader stones, the coarse lava tools used for shaping and smoothing; the land also protects anchialine ponds and turtle nesting beaches.

Which endangered sea turtle nests on the park's coastline?

The hawksbill, honuʻea in Hawaiian, nests on remote park beaches such as Āpua Point and Halapē and is one of the rarest sea turtle populations in the Pacific; it shares the coast with the Hawaiian monk seal.

Kīlauea was once thought to be a satellite of Mauna Loa; why?

It is in fact a separate volcano, the second-youngest product of the Hawaiian hotspot, with rift zones running 78 miles east and 22 miles west.

Roughly how old is Kīlauea?

Kīlauea began forming 210,000 to 280,000 years ago on the seafloor and broke the surface about 100,000 years ago; its oldest exposed lavas are only about 2,800 years old.

Mauna Loa was long considered Earth's largest volcano until which submarine giant was recognised as bigger?

Tamu Massif, a seafloor mound east of Japan, was declared the largest single volcano in 2013, though later work argued it formed by seafloor spreading; Mauna Loa kept its title as the largest active volcano.

Which naval officer led the 1840 US Exploring Expedition that camped in the park area en route to Mauna Loa?

Charles Wilkes wintered in Hawaii during his 1838-42 Pacific survey and in December 1840 led hundreds of porters up Mauna Loa, spending about three weeks at the summit making pendulum and weather observations.

Mauna Loa's lava is described as what, which is why its eruptions are rarely explosive?

Mauna Loa's basalt is silica-poor and very fluid, so gas escapes easily and eruptions are effusive rather than explosive; even so, flows in 1926 and 1950 destroyed villages, and part of Hilo sits on 1880-81 lava.

Which 1969-74 Kīlauea eruption buried miles of Chain of Craters Road, closing it until 1979?

Mauna Ulu, 'growing mountain', erupted on Kīlauea's east rift from 1969 to 1974; its flows buried about 12 kilometres (7 miles) of Chain of Craters Road, which was rebuilt and reopened in 1979.

Kīlauea's summit sits on which coast of the island of Hawaiʻi?

Kīlauea's summit sits on the island's southeastern side, southwest of Hilo; it is the youngest of the five volcanoes that built the island, with the submarine Kamaʻehuakanaloa growing offshore to its south.

What does the name Kīlauea Iki mean?

Kīlauea Iki means 'little Kīlauea', a pit crater just east of the main caldera about a mile long; the 1959 eruption filled it with a lava lake whose crusted floor the Kīlauea Iki trail crosses.

Kīlauea's decades-long East Rift eruption buried the coastal highway under lava up to how thick?

Lava from the East Rift eruption piled up to 115 feet (35 metres) thick over nearly 9 miles of the coastal highway between the park and Kalapana, and destroyed the Wahaʻula visitor center in 1989.

Where is the park's main entrance?

The main entrance is off the Hawaii Belt Road (Highway 11) about 30 miles southwest of Hilo; the separate Kahuku unit has its own entrance further along the same highway near mile marker 70.

Which Hawaiian territorial delegate introduced the legislation that finally created the park?

Delegate Jonah Kūhiō Kalanianaʻole introduced the park bill in Congress, first in 1911 and again until it passed in 1916; Governor Walter Frear had drafted the original proposal.

Who first proposed the idea of a national park at Kīlauea, in 1903?

William R. Castle, a Honolulu lawyer and businessman, first floated a national park at Kīlauea in 1903; in 1907 the territory paid for fifty members of Congress and their wives to visit, with a dinner cooked over steam vents.

In which year was Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park designated an International Biosphere Reserve?

UNESCO designated Hawaiʻi Volcanoes an International Biosphere Reserve in 1980, recognising its range of ecosystems from coast to alpine summit and its record of ongoing volcanic island-building.