Traveling across the United States, you can see many landmarks left by volcanoes. You can identify cone-shaped volcanoes, but you might miss other volcanic landscapes.
Some volcanoes build mountains, but only during their active lives. When a volcano stops erupting, it begins to wear down, or erode, until only parts of the original mountain are left.
Other volcanoes don’t build mountains at all. Instead, their lava floods a landscape, drowning hills and valleys. Sometimes during an eruption, the top of a volcanic cone collapses and a crater, or caldera, forms. Craters measure from hundreds of feet to tens of miles across.
Let’s visit some of America’s volcanic landmarks.
