Byway Main Page

Byway Sites (Traveling South to North)

  1. Topaz Lake
  2. Walker River
  3. Bridgeport
  4. Conway Summit
  5. Virginia Creek
  6. Mono Lake
  7. Mono Craters
  8. June Lake
  9. Crestview
  10. Mammoth Lakes
  11. Crowley Lake
  12. Sherwin Grade
  13. Round Valley
  14. Bishop
  15. Bristlecone Pines
  16. Division Creek
  17. Owens Valley
  18. Dehy Park
  19. Manzanar
  20. Lone Pine
  21. Diaz Lake
  22. Coso Junction
  23. Fossil Falls

 

Site No. 7 — Mono Craters on Sandhouse Grade

Highlights

Glaciers and Volcanos

Except for the Sierra Nevada immediately to the west, Mono Lake is surrounded by a volcanic landscape. The Bodie Hills to the north and the Cowtrack Mountains to the East of the lake do not look much like volcanoes today, but they are remnants of an earlier volcanic era that predated the existence of Mono Lake hundreds of thousands to millions of years ago.

The Mono Craters, stretching to the south of Mono erupted recently in geologic time and are the some of the more obvious volcanic features at Mono Lake along with Black Point and the Negit Island volcanoes.

This volcanic chain stretching ten miles north to south and topping 9,000 ft. may be the youngest volcanic mountain range in North America. The last eruption in the Mono Craters chain occurred less than 700 years ago at Panum Crater. Panum Crater, located just above the south shore of Mono Lake, is not a true crater. It is more accurately a plug-dome volcano, where cooled lava has created a massive dome-like structure that now "plugs" the volcanic vent at the bottom of the crater.

The entire Mono Craters chain is actually a series of plug dome volcanoes that erupted into existence within the last 40,000 years. Odds are the Mono Craters will erupt again

Local Resources

Volcanic History - Mono Lake Committee