Your National Parks, with Detailed Information for Tourists
John Stuart Mill · en
The land of form, the realm of music and of song--running, pouring,
rushing, rhythmic waters; but preëminently a land of color: flowing
red, yellow, orange, crimson and purplish, green and blue. Miles of
black and white. This riot and regularity and vast distribution of
color in continual change--it glows and is subdued with the shift of
shadows, with the view-point of the sun.
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LASSEN VOLCANIC NATIONAL PARK
An active volcano is the imposing exhibit in the Lassen Volcanic
National Park. The fiery Lassen Peak rises in the midst of telling
volcanic records that have been made and changed through many thousand
years.
This Park is in northern California. It is about one hundred and fifty
miles south of the Crater Lake National Park. The territory embraces
the southern end of the Cascade Mountains, the northern end of the
Sierra, and through it is the cross-connection between the Sierra and
the Coast Range. The area is about one hundred and twenty-five square
miles. The major portion of the Park lies at an altitude of between
six thousand and eight thousand feet, the lowest part being about four
thousand feet, while the highest point, the summit of Lassen Peak, is
10,437 feet above the level of the sea. The Park is reached by
automobile roads. It is easily accessible from the Southern Pacific
Railroad in the upper Sacramento Valley, and from the Western Pacific
Railroad on the Feather River.
The scientific and scenic merits of this territory were of such
uncommon order that in 1907 they were reserved in the Mount Lassen and
Cinder Cone National Monuments. Both these reservations are now merged
into the Lassen Volcanic National Park.
Lassen Peak is one of the great volcanoes of the Pacific Coast. Most
of the material in it, and that of the surrounding territory, appears
to be of volcanic origin. It is in the margin of one of the largest
lava-fields in the world. The lava in this vast field extends
northward through western Oregon and Washington and far eastward,
including southern Idaho and the Yellowstone National Park. It has an
area of about two hundred and fifty thousand square miles, over parts
of which the lava is of great depth.
Lassen is the southernmost fire mountain of that numerous group of
volcanoes that have so greatly changed the surface of the Northwest.
Among its conspicuous volcanic companions are Crater Lake, formerly
Mount Mazama, Mount Hood, Mount St. Helens, Mount Baker, and Mount
Rainier. Until Lassen Peak burst forth in 1914 it had slumbered for
centuries, and was commonly considered extinct. It has probably been
intermittently active for ages. Many geologists think that this
activity has extended through not less than two million years. Just
how long it may show its red tongue and its black clouds of breath is
uncertain; and just how violent and how voluminous its eruptions may
become are matters of conjecture.