46 Fun Facts About Lassen Volcanic National Park

Lassen Peak is the southernmost active volcano of which mountains?

Lassen Peak is the southernmost active volcano in the Cascades, the arc of volcanoes that stretches north from California through Oregon and Washington into British Columbia.

Lassen Peak holds what world record among volcanoes?

Lassen Peak is the world's largest plug dome volcano, a mass of stiff lava about 2,000 feet high and two miles across that rose through the flank of an older volcano, probably within a few years.

Which four types of volcano can all be found in the park?

The four are plug dome (Lassen Peak), shield (Prospect Peak and Mount Harkness), cinder cone (Cinder Cone itself) and stratovolcano (Brokeoff Mountain); few places on Earth hold all four.

How tall is Lassen Peak?

Lassen Peak tops out at 10,457 feet; a 2.5-mile trail climbs about 2,000 feet from the road to the summit, where craters from the 1914-17 eruptions can be seen.

What subduction process supplies the heat for Lassen's volcanism?

The same subduction feeds the whole Cascade arc; nine seismometers relay data to the USGS in Menlo Park.

Which president designated Cinder Cone and Lassen Peak as separate national monuments in 1907?

Theodore Roosevelt, who created 18 national monuments under the 1906 Antiquities Act, proclaimed Lassen Peak and Cinder Cone national monuments on 6 May 1907; both lay inside the Lassen Peak Forest Reserve.

On what date did the park's most powerful eruption occur, blasting ash 280 miles east?

On May 22, 1915, Lassen blew a column of ash more than 30,000 feet high, visible from Eureka 150 miles to the west; the blast and mudflow flattened the forest now called the Devastated Area.

Lassen Peak and which other volcano were the only two in the contiguous US to erupt in the 20th century?

Lassen's total 1914-17 output was 0.007 cubic miles, dwarfed by the 0.24 cubic miles of St. Helens in 1980.

In which year was Lassen Volcanic National Park established, while the peak was still erupting?

Congress acted on August 9, 1916, weeks before the National Park Service itself was created; steam blasts continued into 1921.

How many people were killed by the 1914-1921 eruptions?

Warnings got people out in time, though several houses along the creeks were destroyed by mudflows.

Who took the best-known photographs of Lassen Peak's eruptions?

Benjamin F. Loomis, a businessman from nearby Viola, shot the June 14, 1914 eruption in a famous sequence; the Loomis Museum at Manzanita Lake, which he built in 1927, displays his work.

Lassen Peak sits on the flank of which vanished stratovolcano, once about a thousand feet taller?

Mount Tehama, also called Brokeoff Volcano, was a stratovolcano some 11,000 feet high and 11 to 15 miles across; Brokeoff Mountain, Mount Diller and Pilot Pinnacle are remnants of its rim.

Roughly how long ago did Lassen Peak begin to rise as a lava dome?

Lassen Peak rose about 27,000 years ago, a figure revised upward from an earlier estimate of 18,000; ice-age glaciers later scoured the young dome, leaving the polished rock seen on its flanks.

What is the park's largest hydrothermal area, with boiling mudpots and roaring fumaroles?

Bumpass Hell, a 16-acre basin of mudpots, steam vents and boiling pools, is the park's largest hydrothermal area; its Big Boiler fumarole has been measured at 322 °F, among the hottest in the world.

What happened to Kendall Vanhook Bumpass, the cowboy for whom the park's biggest thermal area is named?

He broke through the thin crust into scalding mud on a trip in the 1860s and the leg had to be amputated.

Which geothermal area between Lassen Peak and Brokeoff Mountain marks the vanished volcano's centre?

Sulphur Works, beside the park road just above the southwest entrance, sits near the old vent of the vanished volcano; its roadside mudpot and sulphur-scented steam vents are the park's most easily reached thermal features.

Tree-ring analysis has dated the last eruption of Cinder Cone to which year?

Tree rings from pines scarred or killed by the eruption date it to 1666; settlers' reports of fire thrown from the cone in 1850-51 were later shown to be mistaken, and the eruption was a single event.

What are the Fantastic Lava Beds?

The Fantastic Lava Beds are rough, blocky basalt flows that poured from the base of Cinder Cone rather than from its summit; the jumbled black rock spreads south and east of the cone.

How high does Cinder Cone rise above the surrounding land?

Cinder Cone rises about 750 feet above the surrounding land, a near-perfect cone of loose scoria; the trail up its steep slopes ends at a double-rimmed summit crater left by two phases of one eruption.

Manzanita Lake was created about three centuries ago when what happened?

About 300 years ago a rock avalanche from Chaos Crags, the Chaos Jumbles, dammed Manzanita Creek to form the lake; the debris is thought to have ridden a cushion of compressed air at 100 mph or more.

Which national scenic trail passes through the park on its route from Mexico to Canada?

The Pacific Crest Trail runs about 17 miles through the eastern side of the park on its 2,650-mile route from Mexico to Canada; most northbound through-hikers pass in July.

The Chaos Crags, the largest of the young domes near Lassen Peak, began forming about how long ago?

The Chaos Crags grew about 1,100 years ago in the park's most recent dome-building episode: explosive pumice eruptions came first, then six stiff lava domes, parts of which collapsed into pyroclastic flows.

Peter Lassen, the park's namesake, was a blacksmith from which country?

Peter Lassen, born in Farum, Denmark, in 1800, trained as a blacksmith before emigrating; he opened his emigrant trail past the peak in 1848 and was murdered near Nevada's Black Rock Desert in 1859.

Which Native people believed the peak was full of fire and water and would one day blow apart?

The Atsugewi, who lived along Hat Creek north of the peak, held that it was full of fire and water and would one day blow apart, a belief the eruptions of the 1910s seemed to bear out.

The park's Kohm Yah-mah-nee Visitor Center takes its name from which language's word for Lassen Peak?

Kohm Yah-mah-nee means 'snow mountain' in Mountain Maidu, the language of the people whose homeland took in the park's southern slopes; the centre opened in 2008 near the southwest entrance.

Which 1851 pioneer wagon route to the Sacramento Valley was cut through the park past Cinder Cone?

William Nobles found an easy link between the Applegate Trail in Nevada and the Lassen Trail; it replaced Lassen's own route.

Which American fur trapper is recorded as passing near Lassen Peak in 1828?

Jedediah Smith led his trapping party north through the Sacramento Valley in spring 1828, passing west of the peak on the way to Oregon; the mountain man was killed by Comanches on the Santa Fe Trail in 1831.

How high does the Main Park Road climb near Lassen Peak?

The road crests at 8,512 feet beside the Lassen Peak trailhead, the highest point on any road in the range; drifts up to 40 feet deep keep the pass closed into early summer most years.

Roughly how much snow falls at Lake Helen, at 8,200 feet, in a year?

Lake Helen averages roughly 600 to 700 inches of snow a year, more than 50 feet, which makes it one of the snowiest spots in California; the lake usually stays frozen until July.

Why does the park get more precipitation than anywhere else in its range south of the Three Sisters?

The 29-mile park road was built between 1925 and 1931 and its Highway 89 section closes for the winter under the snowpack.

Which rare mammal survives in the park as a population of only about 20 animals?

The Sierra Nevada red fox, a small high-elevation subspecies, survives around Lassen Peak as a population of only about 20 animals; California listed it as threatened in 1980, and it is among the state's rarest mammals.

Which 2021 wildfire, the largest in park history, burned about 69 percent of the park?

The Dixie Fire, which burned nearly a million acres in the summer of 2021, entered the park near Juniper Lake on August 5 and scorched about 73,000 of its 106,000 acres; the scar of a 2012 fire helped slow it.

What share of the area burned by the 2021 fire inside the park burned at high severity?

About 33 percent of the burned area inside the park burned at high severity, killing most trees; roughly 49 percent burned at low to moderate severity and 18 percent so lightly that it was left essentially unchanged.

Where is the park's headquarters, evacuated during the 2021 fire?

Park headquarters is in Mineral, a small community on Highway 36 about 45 miles east of Red Bluff and nine miles from the park's southwest entrance.

Which historic guest ranch at the head of Warner Valley sits inside the park?

Drakesbad, 'Drake's bath', grew from trapper Edward Drake's 1880s homestead around Warner Valley's hot springs and was renamed by the Sifford family, who bought it in 1900; the ranch lost several buildings in the 2021 fire.

Which hot-spring features lie in Warner Valley on the southern edge of the Lassen Plateau?

Boiling Springs Lake, Devils Kitchen and Terminal Geyser all lie in Warner Valley; the lake's water sits near 125 °F, and Terminal Geyser, despite its name, is a steam vent blowing through a stream rather than a true geyser.

How many vehicle entrances does the park have?

There are five: the northwest and southwest entrances on Highway 89 at either end of the Main Park Road, plus unpaved roads into Warner Valley, Juniper Lake and Butte Lake.

In which year did Congress designate the Lassen Volcanic Wilderness?

Congress designated the Lassen Volcanic Wilderness in 1972, covering about 79,000 acres, roughly three-quarters of the park; it is managed under the 1964 Wilderness Act with no roads or permanent structures.

What is Lassen Peak made of?

Lassen Peak is built of dacite, a silica-rich lava too stiff to flow far, which is why it piled up as a steep plug dome; the lava that oozed onto its summit in the 1910s is dacite too.

What threat level does the USGS assign to Lassen in its national volcano assessment?

The USGS rates Lassen a 'very high' threat, one of 18 US volcanoes in that top tier, because of its record of explosive eruptions and the people and infrastructure within reach of its ash and mudflows.

How much old-growth forest does the park preserve?

About 27,000 acres of old-growth forest survive in the park, spanning every one of its major forest types from the mixed-conifer belt at the lowest elevations to the stunted stands near tree line.

Which Mexican governor granted Peter Lassen the vast Rancho Bosquejo after he became a Mexican citizen?

Governor Manuel Micheltorena granted the 22,000-acre Rancho Bosquejo on Deer Creek to Lassen in 1844; there he planted vineyards and laid out a town called Benton City that never took off.

Which two lakes were formed when Cinder Cone's lava flows dammed local creeks?

Snag and Butte lakes flank the Fantastic Lava Beds: the flows dammed Butte Creek to create Snag Lake, whose drowned trees gave it its name, and cut off Butte Lake to the north.

How long is the Main Park Road, built between 1925 and 1931?

The Main Park Road winds 29 miles between the northwest and southwest entrances, passing Manzanita Lake, the Devastated Area and the Lassen Peak trailhead; built between 1925 and 1931, it usually closes from November to June.

Which tree species dominates the forest belt between about 6,500 and 8,000 feet in the park?

Red fir, with deep-purple cones standing upright on its branches, forms nearly pure stands between about 6,500 and 8,000 feet; below that a mixed-conifer forest of ponderosa, Jeffrey and sugar pines and white fir takes over.

Roughly how much snow falls each year at the visitor center near the park's southwest entrance?

The visitor centre near the southwest entrance, at about 6,700 feet, averages roughly 430 inches of snow a year, around 36 feet, which is why the road beyond it stays closed for much of the winter.