Today’s Craters of the Moon National Monument encompasses 83 square miles of the much larger Craters of the Moon lava field. Reaching southeastward from the Pioneer Mountains, the park boundary encloses a series of fissure vents, volcanic cones, and lava flows known as the Great Rift volcanic zone. This volcanic rift zone is a line of weakness in the Earth’s crust that can be traced for some 60 miles across the Snake River Plain. Recent volcanism marks much of its length. You can explore the Great Rift and some of its volcanic features via the park’s 7-mile Loop Drive, as described in Part Three of this handbook. In the park’s northern part you will find spatter cones, cinder cones, lava flows, lava caves, and an unexpected variety of wildflowers, shrubs, trees, and wild animals. The much larger southern part of the park, designated by Congress in 1970 as the Craters of the Moon Wilderness Area, is a vast and largely untraveled region of stark volcanic features flanking the Great Rift. It offers a challenge to serious hikers and explorers—latter day Robert Limberts—who are prepared for rugged wilderness travel.
Despite its seeming barrenness, Craters of the Moon is indeed home to a surprising diversity of plant and animal life. As Limbert noted in 1924: “In the West the term ‘Lava Beds of Idaho’ has always signified a region to be shunned by even the most venturesome travelers—a land supposedly barren of vegetation, destitute of water, devoid of animal life, and lacking in scenic interest.
“In reality the region has slight resemblance to its imagined aspect. Its vegetation is mostly hidden in pockets, but when found consists of pines, cedars, junipers, and sagebrush: its water is hidden deep in tanks or holes at the bottom of large ‘blow-outs’ and is found only by following old Indian or mountain sheep trails or by watching the flight of birds as they drop into these places to quench their thirst. The animal life consists principally of migrant birds, rock rabbits, woodchucks, black and grizzly bears: its scenery is impressive in its grandeur.”
Years of patient record-keeping by scientists have fit numbers to Limbert’s perceptive observations. The number of species identified includes more than 300 plants, 2,000 insects, 8 reptiles, 140 birds, 30 mammals—and one amphibian, the western toad. We now call Limbert’s “rock rabbit” the pika. The grizzly is long gone here. With few exceptions, the park’s denizens live mostly under conditions of great environmental stress.
Near constant winds, breeze-to-gale in strength, sweep across the park to rob moisture from all living things. Scant soils, low levels of precipitation, the inability of cinder cones to hold rainwater near the surface, and the heat of the summer sun—intensified by heat-absorbing black lavas—only aggravate such moisture theft. Cinder surfaces register summer soil temperatures of over 150°F and show a lack of plant cover. Plants cover generally less than 5 percent of the total surface of the cinder cones. A recent study found that when the area is looked at on a parkwide basis, most of the land is very sparsely vegetated (less than 15 percent vegetative cover). On a scale of sand trap to putting green, this would approach the sand trap end of the scale.
Winter snow transforms these landscapes, smoothing out both contours and the jagged edges of lavas. Less lunar in appearance now, the park nonetheless maintains an otherworldly aura.
The park was named in 1924, 45 years before humans walked on the Moon. Although we now know more about the Moon’s actual surface, the park’s name still rings true. Only a few trees immediately suggest that the large photo was taken on Earth. In the inset photo, astronaut Edwin E. “Buzz” Aldrin walks on the Moon near the lunar module.
Into this difficult environment wildlife researcher Brad Griffith ventured to count, mark, and scrutinize the mule deer of Craters of the Moon in May 1980. Griffith, of the University of Idaho, conducted a three-year study of the park’s mule deer population because the National Park Service was concerned that this protected and productive herd might multiply so much that it would eventually damage its habitat. Among other things, he would find that the herd has developed a drought evasion strategy that makes it behave unlike any mule deer population known anywhere else.