Spud Hilton (yes, that’s his name) of the San Francisco Chronicle decided to visit the Route 66 town of Flagstaff, Ariz., for a different reason than most tourists would — he wanted to explore the region’s volcanoes.
Volcanoes? Yes, and not just a few of them, either.
… Flagstaff sits at the center of the little-known San Francisco Volcanic Field, one of the most densely volcanic regions in North America. Unlike Northern Arizona’s famous features carved by wind and water, this 1,800-square mile region was forged in fire, a lava lover’s sampler plate with more than 600 volcanoes, where the adventurous can climb into a cross-sectioned cinder cone, hike what was once the caldera of a stratovolcano taller than the Rockies, follow the route of lava flows above ground and below, and walk among the ruins left by ancient Americans who changed the way they built, grew and co-existed because of an eruption 900 years ago that turned the sky black and the land gray.
And Flagstaff’s location at the base of the largest volcano makes it the perfect base for exploring the fiery past, as well as sampling the city’s increasingly hip present.
Because of a random hotspot similar to the one that created the Hawaiian Islands, an area around Flagstaff 50 miles long and 35 miles wide is so flush with volcanoes that geologists often refer to them by assigned number instead of by name. There is a cinder cone, lava dome or stratovolcano for every 3 square miles. If you applied that rate elsewhere, there would be 16 volcanoes within the city limits of San Francisco. Every feature 10 stories or taller exists because molten rock burbled up through every available pore in the landscape.
If you visit, don’t worry about becoming a victim like the residents of Pompeii did centuries ago. The volcanoes around Flagstaff are dormant — at least for now.