The Land of A Thousand Volcanoes
New Mexico’s landscape is alive if you know where—and how—to look.
BY LARRY CRUMPLER
Volcanoes are uncommon in most places, yet volcanoes have created features that are part of the everyday landscape for New Mexicans. There are nearly 1,000 centers of volcanic eruption younger than 4 million years old, and many of these are much, much younger than that.
Volcanoes are an integral and widespread part of the New Mexico landscape. It’s an important association because, over and over again, when someone wants to express why the place we call New Mexico is special, the word “landscape” usually figures prominently in their first sentence.
Read more about “The Land of A Thousand Volcanoes” at http://www.elpalacio.org/…/the-land-of-a-thousand…, by Dr. Larry Crumpler, a self-funded research curator of volcanology and space sciences at the
New Mexico Museum of Natural History & Science
. Recently he contributed to a new renovation of the museum’s Land of Volcanoes exhibition, where visitors may feel the power and sound of volcanoes, interact with virtual flowing lava, and learn about volcanoes and volcanic rocks around New Mexico from interactive exhibits.
Image: Capulin Volcano National Monument, a cinder cone in the Raton-Clayton volcanic field of northeastern New Mexico.
