Your National Parks, with Detailed Information for TouristsMills, Enos A.
Philosophy
Your National Parks, with Detailed Information for Tourists
Mills, Enos A.
National parks and reserves -- Canada; National parks and reserves -- United States; West (U.S.) -- Guidebooks
Says J. S. Diller, of the United States Geological Survey, "With its
comfortably active volcano, inviting cinder cones and lava fields,
vigorously boiling hot springs, mud lakes and 'mush pots' for the
vulcanologist to study, and the glaciated divides and cañons for the
physiographer, in a setting of lovely scenery and attractive camps,
for the tourists all easily accessible, the Lassen Peak region affords
one of the most alluring and instructive spots for a National Park."
XI
HAWAII NATIONAL PARK
A volcanic exhibit unrivaled in the world is embraced in the Hawaii
National Park, which was created in 1916. This Park consists of two
volcanic sections in the Hawaiian Islands, with a total area of one
hundred and seventeen square miles. Within this territory are two
active volcanoes, Kilauea and Mauna Loa on the island of Hawaii; and
one sleeping volcano, Haleakala on the island of Maui.
The celebrated and unequaled Hawaiian volcanoes are a national scenic
asset, unique of their kind and famous in the world of science.
Apparently, the ocean has been filled in and the entire group of
Hawaiian Islands built by the lava-outpourings of volcanoes. In this
National Park we may see volcanic topography in the course of
construction; some landscapes just cast in the process of cooling;
others that are beginning to show the erosion of the elements; also
those which vegetation is just possessing.
The Hawaii National Park has about the same latitude as the City of
Mexico. There are about a dozen islands in the group, with a total
area of seventy-five hundred square miles. Honolulu, the capital city,
is on the island of Oahu, near the middle of the island chain, which
extends from northwest to southeast. From San Francisco it is about
twenty-one hundred miles to Honolulu.
Kilauea is more than two hundred miles southeast of Honolulu, and
thirty miles inland from the port of Hilo. Twenty miles to the west
from Kilauea is Mauna Loa. The crater of Haleakala is on a different
island from Kilauea and Mauna Loa, about midway between these and
Honolulu.
The active rim of Kilauea is four thousand feet above the sea. The
slopes of this volcano have an exceedingly flat grade. It is the most
continuously active of the three volcanoes in this Park. It has a pit
in which the molten lava rises and falls and is boiling all the time.
For a century Kilauea has been almost continuously active with a lake
or lakes of molten lava. The crater of Kilauea is not a steep
mountain-top, but a broad, forested plateau, beneath which is a lava
sink three miles in diameter, surrounded by cliffs three hundred feet
high. Several times during the last century the active crater was
upheaved into a hill. In a little while it collapsed into a deep pit
with marvelously spectacular avalanches, fiery grottos, and clouds of
steam and brown dust. Through many years the crater was overflowing.
Frequently large pieces of the shore fall into the molten lake,
forming islands.
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