Sunset Crater Volcano National Monument ⓘ

People had been living in and around the volcanic hills of northern Arizona for generations before Sunset Crater Volcano erupted. To the Hopi, those people are the Hisatsinom , the people who came before. In the archeological literature, they are the Sinagua or the Ancestral Puebloan people. They were farmers, living all around what is now the Flagstaff area in villages and towns across the lands they tended. Their homes were pithouses, dug partially into the ground. These people lived their lives in a landscape much like what we see today: ponserosa forests and open meadows, framed by the San Francisco Peaks and other ancient volcanoes. Then, about a thousand years ago, a new volcano emerged literally before their eyes. Warnings that something was about to occur came days or weeks ahead of time, in the form of earthquakes. No evidence has been found that people died as a direct result of the eruption, so it seems there was enough warning for people to evacuate from their homes. After the eruption, pithouses for miles around were burned and filled with cinders, and others were buried beneath the lava.

In the aftermath, the Sunset Crater area was no longer farmable. The volcano itself occupied one end of a small valley, and its two lava flows filled valleys to depths of 100 feet (34 meters). People relocated to other nearby communities like Walnut Canyon and Wupatki , where they found that thinner layers of ash and cinders from the eruption had improved the soil, holding more moisture and making traditional dryland farming easier. Within a generation after the people were displaced by the eruption, new villages had been built, new fields planted, and new lifeways begun. Agriculture and trade flourished in those areas for years before people once again moved on. Their descendants, including the Hopi and A:shiwi, still live nearby; memories of the eruption live on in their stories and traditions. Indigenous names of the volcano often describe the eruption, like the Apache Ha Gudní Káá, which translates to "Where It Burned." Other names describe the resulting volcano, like the Hopi Palatsmo , "Red Hill" and the Diné Dził Bilátah Łitsoí, "Yellow-Tipped Mountain."

Several centuries after the eruption of Sunset Crater Volcano, new groups of people began to appear in the area. In the 1530s, Estevanico , an enslaved man from Morocco and the first African to explore North America, may have passed through southern Arizona. With him were three other men, the only survivors of the ill-fated Narváez expedition . A few years later, in 1539, an Italian immigrant named Marco de Nizza crossed into Arizona in the San Rafael Valley, along the Santa Cruz River, then turned east to visit Zuni Pueblo before returning to Culiacán in the mountains of Sinaloa. Two years after that, the Hopi town of Awatovi became the first to be visited and occupied by European colonizers. In 1540-41, a large Spanish force passed through northern Arizona. Francisco Vázquez de Coronado led a force of around 2500 people, including enslaved Indigenous and African people, Indigenous allies, and around 400 armed Spanish men, northwards from Culiacán along the Pacific coast. For six months they traveled north through the Arizona mountains to the Zuni town of Háwikku , which Coronado's army attacked and captured. During the weeks that followed, Coronado sent out several scouting missions into the surrounding territory, where they came to Awatovi and Tusayan. From there, Hopi people led García López de Cárdenas and a small group of men westward through their homeland to the Grand Canyon. Though the canyon, Öngtupqa, has been known to the Hopi and their Indigenous neighbors for generations, it's likely that Cárdenas and his men were the first Europeans to see it. After the Coronado expedition left the region in 1541, several decades passed without many - or any - European visitors. The next recorded visitor came to Hopi 40 years later, in 1583, when Antonio de Espejo traveled up the Rio Grande Valley and then west through Zuni, Acoma, and the Hopi mesas with a group of about 30 Indigenous servants, a dozen soldiers, a Catholic priest. Hopi guides led Espejo and his company through the Verde Valley and the mines around modern-day Jerome, Arizona.

Though the people traveling with Cárdenas's and Espejo's expeditions certainly saw the volcanoes of northern Arizona, it would be another few decades before a Spanish name was recorded for them. In 1629, the name Sierra de San Francisco was given to the Peaks, the largest of the region's volcanoes, by Catholic friars at a mission in Oraibi. The Spanish name Sierra Sin Agua , or Sierra Sinagua , is also used. In Spain large mountain ranges often have springs, streams, and rivers, and so the Spanish armies who first used the name Sin Agua here were surprised to find mountains with little water and no permanent streams. Many Indigenous names for the mountains, however, reference snowfall and rain, and recognize the mountains as a significant water source in a dry land. The Diné name for the Peaks is Dookʼoʼoosłííd , which means "the mountain that never thaws." The Hopi name is Nuvaʼtukyaʼovi , "shining on top" or "snow on top." Dookʼoʼoosłííd is the western sacred mountain of the Diné. Nuvaʼtukyaʼovi is also sacred to the Hopi, the A:shiwi (who call it Sunha Kʼhbchu Yalanne ), and the Havasu 'Baaja (who call it Hvehasahpatch ), among others.

Much later, in the 1800s, white colonists arrived in the region, and with them came ranching, logging, mining, and the railroad. The English name Sunset Volcano was given to the cinder cone by John Wesley Powell in 1885. He wrote:

The contrast in the colors is so great that on viewing the mountain from a distance the red cinders seem to be on fire.

In 1928 a movie company wishing to film a landslide proposed blowing up Sunset Crater Volcano . The citizens of Flagstaff feared irreversible damage to the volcano and advocated for its protection. In 1930 President Hoover established Sunset Crater National Monument and the National Park Service took on responsibility for the geologic and human history of the site. The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) assisted in construction of some roads and visitor facilities during the 1930s, and others were constructed during the Mission 66 years. Since 2000 Sunset Crater Volcano National Monument has had an average of around 165,000 visitors each year. Volcanic landscapes are in great abundance in northern Arizona, as is human history both ancient and new, and nowhere is the relationship between the two quite so apparent as it is here. Human activity has long been an essential part of this landscape, and as the National Park Service moves into its second century of managing public lands, questions of how much and what type of human activity is acceptable, permissible, or desirable continue to emerge. Our impact on this landscape - both collective and individual - will determine its future.

The entire region that includes the Flagstaff Area National Monuments has been home to Native people since time immemorial.

The Flagstaff Area National Monuments (Walnut Canyon, Sunset Crater Volcano, and Wupatki) are places of immeasurable importance to Native peoples in the Southwest. Wupatki shares boundaries with the Navajo Nation, and a total of thirteen federally recognized tribes are traditionally associated with the Monuments. Park staff have been working with tribal people for many years and are creating ever-better collaborative tribal partnerships. We gratefully acknowledge the Native peoples on whose ancestral homelands we gather, as well as the diverse and vibrant Native communities who continue to make their home here today.

As we celebrate Native heritage, please take a moment to ponder and appreciate the diverse cultural stories these lands hold. This history, played out on lands including the Flagstaff Area National Monuments, has been dramatic and difficult - but learning from the past can help us all in the future.

There are thirteen tribes connected to the lands and resources now found within the Flagstaff Area National Monuments:

Around the year 1085 CE, a series of eruptions—the only eruptions in the southwest that were indisputably witnessed by local people—brought the dormant San Francisco Volcanic Field back to life. Earthquakes, thunderclaps, and fountains of lava shook the ground. Billowing ash, falling cinders, and forest fires blackened both the landscape and the daytime sky, and at night the horizon glowed fiery red. The ash cloud and the glow in the sky were visible for hundreds of miles, and most people living in the southwest would have known that something very unusual was happening near the San Francisco Peaks. When the field again grew quiet, a classic example of a cinder cone, Sunset Crater Volcano, loomed over a dramatically altered land of lava flows and cinders. The eruption buried the surrounding terrain with a layer of cinders several feet thick, and filled in two small valleys with lava flows that are a hundred feet (35 meters) deep. Today Sunset Crater Volcano National Monument protects 3040 acres around the Colorado Plateau’s most recent volcanic eruption. It is the youngest, least-eroded cinder cone in the San Francisco Volcanic Field. Much of the ground surface of the monument is covered by lava flows or deep volcanic cinder deposits. At first glance, the landscape still appears stark and inhospitable. But look again - within the dramatic geologic features are small islands of pine and aspen trees, desert shrubs, and wildflowers. These provide small but unique habitats for local wildlife as well. Slowly but surely, life returns. The powerful geologic processes that formed the volcano profoundly affected the way of life of local inhabitants during the 11th and 12th centuries and forever changed both the landscape and the ecology of the area. This volcano and its relatively undeveloped landscape provide an unparalleled opportunity to study plant succession and ecological change in an arid volcanic landscape.

Backcountry hiking is not allowed in order to protect fragile geological and archeological features, as well as the recovering landscape. Hiking is permitted only on designated trails. Use caution when hiking: lava is brittle, unstable, and sharp! Lava Flow Trail Accessible for wheelchairs, walkers, and strollers! Explore the Bonito Lava Flow and numerous volcanic features while walking at the base of Sunset Crater Volcano. Pets are welcome on the paved portion of this trail . There is a pet station with waste bags at the trailhead. Distance: 1 mi (1.6 km) loop Time: 1 hour Difficulty: Easy. The accessible upper 0.25 mi (0.5 km) loop has a paved, concrete surface. Bonito Vista Trail Accessible for wheelchairs, walkers, and strollers! Walk across a field of cinders on this paved trail for an expansive view of the Bonito Lava Flow and surrounding volcanoes. Distance: 0.3 mi (0.5 km) round-trip Time: 20 minutes Difficulty: Easy, Accessible Lenox Crater Trail Walk in a ponderosa pine forest while viewing Sunset Crater Volcano, the Bonito Lava Flow, O’Leary Peak, and from the summit, sweeping views of the San Francisco Peaks. Distance: 1.6 mi (2.6 km) round-trip Time: 1.5 hours Difficulty: Moderately Strenuous A’a Trail Observe jagged blocks of rough, basaltic a’a lava, formed as the Bonito Lava Flow cooled. Distance: 0.25 mi (0.3 km) round-trip Time: 15 minutes Difficulty: Easy Lava’s Edge Trail Walk under ponderosa pines, over loose cinders and rough basalt along the jagged edge of the Bonito Lava Flow. Note : Pets are allowed on the U.S. Forest Service section of this trail only, 2 mi (3.2 km) round-trip. Ask rangers at the visitor center for details. Distance: 3.4 mi (5.5 km) round-trip Time: 2.5 hours Difficulty: Moderate