Get the Ricochet app
Ricochet will work fine in a browser on your mobile devices, but for the best experience please download our app.
The Newberry Volcano is a caldera in the high desert area of Oregon. The Newberry Volcano is a shield-composite volcano. The photos in this essay are from US Forest Service and the USGS.
Although commonly referred to as Newberry Crater, the "crater" is in fact a caldera formed when the overlying rocks collapse when a magma chamber is emptied. The caldera stretches across 17 square miles in the heart of the volcano.
The 1,200 square mile volcano (about the size of Rhode Island) remains very active to this day. Newberry is both seismically and geothermally active. Geologists believe the caldera sits over a shallow magma body only 2 to 5 kilometers deep. Visitors see numerous cinder cones and vents (over 400 throughout the area), miles of basalt flows, as well as rhyolite flows of obsidian. - US Forest Service
The view from Pilot Butte in Bend.
The most recent eruption of the Newberry volcano was about 1,300 years ago. 10 feet of ash and volcanic bombs fell inside the caldera, but the tephra can be found to the east as far as Idaho.
Discussion (9)
To read this bio, please join Ricochet.
Thanks. Delighted to learn something new about my native state.
CHARTER MEMBER
To read this bio, please join Ricochet.
Engineer sez: "Oooh, geothermal power."
To read this bio, please join Ricochet.
I have either climbed or visited just about every volcano in the Pacific Northwest. Newberry is among my favorites for it shear uniqueness. One aspect of the crater which is, for me, most memorable is the obsidian lava flow. It is something I have never seen anywhere else. The whole crater area is incredibly diverse and impressive, a truly beautiful vacation place.
CHARTER MEMBER
To read this bio, please join Ricochet.
Aww, I thought this was going to be a "She's about to blow!" post.
To read this bio, please join Ricochet.
The U.S. Forest Service managing a National Monument? The roles and missions of the USFS and the NPS have always been very different. The goal of the left has for decades been to convert the USFS into another NPS, even absorbing the former into the latter, replacing resource management with preservation.
We need to know more about what's going on here in order to understand what this means for this country, our economy and our enslavement to those who wish to do us harm.
On first view, this is not good.
You're seeing five of nine comments. Sign in, or join for just $5 per month, to read them all and add your own.