Monument located in western New Mexico, named from the Spanish term Malpaís, meaning badlands, due to the extremely barren and dramatic volcanic field that covers much of the park's area

How to Get There

Overview

El Malpais National Monument is a monument located in western New Mexico. The name El Malpais is from the Spanish term Malpaís, meaning badlands, due to the extremely barren and dramatic volcanic field that covers much of the park's area.

It is on the Trails of the Ancients Byway, one of the designated New Mexico Scenic Byways.

Geography and geology

The lava flows, cinder cones, and other volcanic features of El Malpais are part of the Zuni-Bandera volcanic field, the second largest volcanic field in the Basin and Range Province. This volcanically active area on the southeast margin of the Colorado Plateau is located on the ancient Jemez Lineament, which provides the crustal weakness that recent magmatic intrusions and Cenozoic volcanism are attributed to.

The rugged pāhoehoe and 'a'ā lava flows of the Zuni-Bandera eruptions (also called the Grants Lava Flows) filled a large basin, created by normal faulting associated with the Rio Grande Rift, between the high mesas of the Acoma Pueblo to the east, Mt. Taylor to the north, and the Zuni Mountain anticline to the northwest. Vents associated with these flows include Bandera Crater, El Calderon, and several other cinder cones; more than a dozen older cinder cones follow a roughly north-south distribution along the Chain of Craters west of the monument.

Features

El Malpais has many lava tubes open to explore. There are currently four caves accessible: Junction and Xenolith caves in the El Caldron area, and Big Skylight and Giant Ice caves in the Big Tubes area.

A nearby scenic overlook at Sandstone Bluffs offers spectacular panoramic views over the monument's lava flows.

This article uses material from the Wikipedia article "El Malpais National Monument", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0