DESCRIPTION:
Cinder and Scoria Cones

PilotButte84_pilot_butte_bend_oregon_10-01-84.jpg
Pilot Butte Cinder Cone, located north of Bend, Oregon, as seen from Highway 97.
USGS Photograph taken on October 1, 1984, by Lyn Topinka.
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Cinder cones are the simplest type of volcano. They are built from particles and blobs of congealed lava ejected from a single vent. As the gas-charged lava is blown violently into the air, it breaks into small fragments that solidify and fall as cinders around the vent to form a circular or oval cone. Most cinder cones have a bowl-shaped crater at the summit and rarely rise more than a thousand feet or so above their surroundings. Cinder cones are numerous in western North America as well as throughout other volcanic terrains of the world.

Cinder Cone is a 700-foot-high cone of loose scoria. Scoria forms when blobs of gas-charged lava are thrown into the air during an eruption and cool in flight, falling as dark volcanic rock containing cavities created by trapped gas bubbles.

Mount Shasta: Many lava flows and one cinder cone erupted at several vents between 10,000 and 2,000 years ago.

Medicine Lake Highlands basalt field: At least 15 lava flows and (or) cinder cones within about the last 10,000 years.

Lassen Peak Region Basalt Field: Eruption of >20 mafic centers producing lava flows and (or) cinder cones during the last 10,000 years. ... Covered by fine ash from Cinder Cone about 400 years ago. ... Most recent eruption: Lava flows, tephra, and cinder cone erupted in A.D. 1851.

Mono Lake - Long Valley Area: ... eruptions of cinder cones and flows ate two vents 1,200 to 5,000 years ago.

Amboy Crater - Lavic Lake Basalt Field: ... Several mafic lava flows and cinder cones from several vents during last 10,000 years.

Golden Trout Creek Volcanic Field: One mafic cinder cone and lava flow around 10,000 to 5,000 years ago.

Cinder Cone is a 700-foot-high cone of loose scoria. Scoria forms when blobs of gas-charged lava are thrown into the air during an eruption and cool in flight, falling as dark volcanic rock containing cavities created by trapped gas bubbles.

California Volcanoes and Volcanics Menu

Cerro Negro, (726 meters) Central America's youngest volcano, was born in April 1850 and has been one of the most active volcanoes in Nicaragua. Cerro Negro is the most recent of a group of four very young cinder cones in the central Maribios Range 5 kilometers northwest of Las Pilas volcano. Strombolian eruptions at intervals of a few years to several decades have constructed a 500-meter-high basaltic cone and an associated lava field. Cerro Negro is one of the best-known examples of a cinder cone that has erupted more than once. Its frequent discrete eruptions, separated by long quisecent periods, are in contrast to many other cinder cones, like Paricutin in Mexico, that were formed during a single long-term eruption.

Nicaragua Volcanoes and Volcanics Menu

LavaButte84_lava_butte_near_bend_oregon_10-01-84.jpg
Lava Butte, located south of Bend, Oregon, as seen from Highway 97.
USGS Photograph taken on October 1, 1984, by Lyn Topinka.
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More than 400 cinder cones and fissure vents have been identified on the flanks of Newberry -- few other volcanoes in the world contain so many ...

Most of the cinder cones are well preserved owing to their high porosity and consequent absorption rather than runoff of water. Larger cones are as much as 500 feet high, typical cones are 200 to 300 feet. Most are marked by summit craters and flows emerge from their bases. Cinders dispersed by prevailing winds during eruptions form aprons extending leeward from some cones such as Lava Butte. ...

Lava Butte (elevation 4,970 feet). The basaltic andesite flow derived from Lava Butte extends northward more than 5 miles and westward 3 miles to the Deschutes River. ... It is one of many basaltic andesite flows on Newberry that have carbon-14 ages of about 6,100 years. ... The lava flow emerges from the south side of the butte.

Lava Butte Menu

More than 400 cinder cones and fissure vents have been identified on the flanks of Newberry -- few other volcanoes in the world contain so many ...

Most of the cinder cones are well preserved owing to their high porosity and consequent absorption rather than runoff of water. Larger cones are as much as 500 feet high, typical cones are 200 to 300 feet. Most are marked by summit craters and flows emerge from their bases. Cinders dispersed by prevailing winds during eruptions form aprons extending leeward from some cones such as Lava Butte. ...

Newberry Caldera Menu

The Raton Clayton volcanic field, in the extreme northeastern corner of New Mexico, is Pliocene to Holocene in age. Approximately 120 basaltic to nephelinitic cinder cones, ranging in age from greater than 1 million to 2,300 years old, are distributed throughout the field, with a concentration of feldspathoidal compositions near the town of Des Moines. Many cones have associated lava flows. Perhaps the most impressive cone is the youngest, which is fortunately protected as Capulin National Monument. The rim of this steep-sided cinder cone is approximately 1.7 kilometers in circumference, and stands 305 meters high, with a crater depth of 125 meters.

New Mexico Volcanoes and Volcanics Menu

In 1943 a cinder cone started growing on a farm near the village of Paricutin in Mexico. Explosive eruptions caused by gas rapidly expanding and escaping from molten lava formed cinders that fell back around the vent, building up the cone to a height of 1,200 feet. The last explosive eruption left a funnel-shaped depression called a crater at the top of the cone. After the excess gases had largely dissipated, the molten rock quietly poured out on the surrounding surface of the cone and moved downslope as lava flows. This order of events -- eruption, formation of cone and crater, lava flow -- is a common sequence in the formation of cinder cones.

During nine years of activity Paricutin built a prominent cone, covered about 100 square miles with ashes, and destroyed the town of San Juan. Geologists from many parts of the world studied Paricutin during its lifetime and learned a great deal about volcanism, its products, and the modification of a volcanic landform by erosion.

Mexico Volcanoes and Volcanics Menu

Metropolitan Portland, Oregon, like Auckland, New Zealand, includes most of a Plio-Pleistocene volcanic field. The Boring Lava includes at least 32 and possibly 50 cinder cones and small shield volcanoes lying within a radius of 21 kilometers (13 miles) of Kelly Butte, which is 100 kilometers (62 miles) west of Mount Hood and the High Cascade axis -- (Web note: Kelly Butte is approximately 4 miles east of downtown Portland)-- . Only the Clear Lake volcanics in California lie as far west in the coterminous United States. Unlike Clear Lake, Boring lava vents have been inactive for at least 300,000 years.

Portland, Oregon, Volcanics Menu

Sunset Crater is one of the youngest scoria cones in the contiguous United States. The cone is named for the topmost cap of oxidized, red spatter which makes it appear bathed in the light of the sunset. In the 1920's H. S. Colton saved the cone from severe damage by averting the attempt of a Hollywood movie company to blow it up in order to simulate an eruption. This led to the establishment of the National Monument at Sunset Crater.

The Sunset eruption products are a classic example of a monogenetic strombolian volcanism. The eruption began with the opening of a 15-kilometer-long fissure, accompanied by curtain of fire activity and the growth of a small lava flow at the southeast end. Strombolian fountaining then localized near the northwest end and Sunset scoria cone grew, with the simultaneous deposition of a widespread scoria fall layer. At the same time the 11-kilometer-long Kana-a lava flow issured from the cone. This was followed by further cone building and the production of the Bonito lava flow. This flow may have come from the base of the cone, as it has rafted portions of the cone on its surface. The last phase of the eruption featured low-level fountaining that repaired the cone and deposited the cap of scoria and spatter, which oxidized bright red due to retained heat. ...

The age of the eruption is known from an archaeological site in the vicinity of the crater.

Arizona Volcanoes and Volcanics Menu

CraterLake82_crater_lake_and_wizard_island_09-82.jpg
Crater Lake and Wizard Island.
USGS Photograph taken in September 1982 by Lyn Topinka.
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An interesting variation of a composite volcano can be seen at Crater Lake in Oregon. From what geologists can interpret of its past, a high volcano -- called Mount Mazama -- probably similar in appearance to present-day Mount Rainier was once located at this spot. Following a series of tremendous explosions about 6,600 years ago, the volcano lost its top. Enormous volumes of volcanic ash and dust were expelled and swept down the slopes as ash flows and avalanches. These large-volume explosions rapidly drained the lava beneath the mountain and weakened the upper part. The top then collapsed to form a large depression, which later filled with water and is now completely occupied by beautiful Crater Lake. A last gasp of eruptions produced a small cinder cone which rises above the water surface as Wizard Island in, and near the rim, of the lake.

Crater Lake Caldera Menu

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