The Mono–Inyo Craters are a volcanic chain of craters, domes and lava flows in Mono County, Eastern California. The chain stretches 25 miles from the northwest shore of Mono Lake to the south of Mammoth Mountain. Eruptions along the narrow fissure system under the chain began in the west moat of Long Valley Caldera 400,000 to 60,000 years ago.
About Mono–Inyo Craters in brief
The Mono–Inyo Craters are a volcanic chain of craters, domes and lava flows in Mono County, Eastern California. The chain stretches 25 miles from the northwest shore of Mono Lake to the south of Mammoth Mountain. Eruptions along the narrow fissure system under the chain began in the west moat of Long Valley Caldera 400,000 to 60,000 years ago. The region has been used by humans for centuries. Obsidian was collected by Mono Paiutes for making sharp tools and arrow points. Glassy rock continues to be removed in modern times for use as commercial scour and yard decoration. Various activities are possible along the chain, including hiking, bird watching, canoeing, skiing, and mountain biking. The highest of the Mono Craters domes is Crater Mountain, which rises 2,400 feet above Pumice Valley to the west. The domes of the chain lie on a roughly north–south-trending arc that is concave to thewest and located south of Mono lake. The Inyo volcanic chain stretches 6 miles to the Inyo Crater, proper. The craters are in the Great Basin geographic area. The nearest incorporated community is Mammoth Lakes, California, and the nearest town is Bodie, California. Mono Lake Volcanic Field and a large part of the mono Craters gained some protection under Mono Basin National Forest Scenic Area in 1984. Resource use along all of theChain is managed by the United States Forest Service as part of Inyo National Forest.
A quarter mile north of these craters is another explosion pit on top of Deer Farther Mountain. These domes are composed of gray rhyolite, Obsidian Dome, Glass Creek Dome, and Wilson Butte Dome, among other volcanic features. South of the Chain are five lava domes, including Deadman Creek Dome and Glass Creek Cone. The Red Cones are a set of cinder cones south of the mountain; the latter are called the Red Cone. : 290 Associated volcanic features are located in Mono Lake and on its north shore. The coulees cluster north and south of the overlapping chain of domes. The Craters in a forest are about 600 feet and 100 to 200 feet deep, each with small ponds covering their floors. Some of these pits are about a quarter mile deep, with each quarter mile wide. Inyo Volcano is not related to the caldera’s Long Valley Caldera but is not unrelated to the Long ValleyCaldera calder a’s volcanism. Lava flows 5,000 year ago built the Redcones, and explosion pits on Mammoth mountain were excavated in the last 1,000 Years. Uplift of Paoha Island in Mono lake about 250 years ago is the most recent activity. These eruptions most likely originated from small magma bodies rather than from a single, large magma chamber like the one that produced the massivelong Valley Calder a eruption 760,000year ago.
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This page is based on the article Mono–Inyo Craters published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 03, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
