50 Fun Facts About Hawaii Volcanoes National Park

Which two active volcanoes lie within Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park?

One is among the most active volcanoes on Earth; the other is the world's largest active volcano by mass and volume.

What does the name Kīlauea mean in Hawaiian, a nod to how often it erupts?

Lavas less than 1,000 years old cover 90 percent of the volcano's surface.

Mauna Loa's name translates as what?

Its gentle shield slopes hold an estimated 18,000 cubic miles of rock, though its summit is about 125 feet lower than Mauna Kea's.

How high is the summit of Mauna Loa?

The park runs from sea level to that summit, from tropical rainforest to barren desert.

Kīlauea's summit crater Halemaʻumaʻu is traditionally regarded as the home of which deity?

Hawaiians still leave offerings at the crater; phenomena such as Pele's hair and Pele's tears take her name.

When it was created in 1916, the park also included which volcano on another island?

The original Hawaii National Park was split into two separate parks in 1961.

Which president signed the 1916 bill creating the park?

It was the eleventh national park and the first in a US territory; the National Park Service itself was created a few weeks later.

Which newspaper owner and hotel investor was the driving force behind creating the park?

Grandson of a missionary, he ran editorials in The Honolulu Advertiser and printed endorsements from John Muir and Theodore Roosevelt; a lava tube bears his family's name.

Which Buffalo Soldier regiment built the park's first trails and infrastructure from 1915 to 1917?

Working with gunny sacks and 12-pound hammers, six companies built a 30-mile trail between the two volcanoes out of crushed lava mixed with soil.

Who were the first Western visitors to reach Kīlauea, in 1823?

Ellis wrote that they stopped and trembled, struck mute by the erupting abyss below.

What is the only hotel located inside the park?

A series of hotels of that name has stood on the crater rim since a grass hut in 1846; the current building dates from 1941.

Which famous author stayed at the crater-rim hotel and described the volcano in Roughing It?

He stayed in the 1866 wood-frame version; the 1877 building now houses the Volcano Art Center.

In 1790 a party of warriors was caught in an explosive eruption; what trace of them can still be seen?

The 1790 Footprints site is on the National Register of Historic Places; explosive eruptions like that one are rare at Kīlauea.

Who founded the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory and directed it from 1912 to 1940?

A Harvard PhD who had seen the Mont Pelée disaster in 1902, he made volcanoes his life's work; the museum named for him was demolished in 2024 after 2018 damage.

Which federal agency runs the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory?

It is one of five USGS volcano observatories and watches six Hawaiian volcanoes; since 2018 it has worked from temporary offices in Hilo.

Kīlauea's eastern rift zone eruption ran nearly continuously from 1983 until which year?

It destroyed the towns of Kalapana and Kaimū and their black-sand beach in 1990 and was the longest-lived rift-zone eruption of the past two centuries.

What is the name of the cinder cone that grew on Kīlauea's east rift during the 1983-2018 eruption?

Kalapana elders named it hill of the digging stick; scientists had first nicknamed it Puʻu O after the letter it sat on in a map label.

How many homes did Hawaii County report destroyed in the 2018 lower Puna eruption?

Two dozen vents fed lava rivers that reached the sea in three places and boiled away Green Lake, the state's largest natural freshwater lake.

What happened at Kīlauea's summit during the 2018 eruption?

At least one blast sent ash 30,000 feet up; some 60,000 earthquakes shook the summit and the park's Kīlauea section closed for months.

What appeared in the bottom of Halemaʻumaʻu in summer 2019, never before seen there in recorded history?

It grew to 160 feet deep before the December 2020 eruption boiled it away and began refilling the crater with lava.

After what gap did Mauna Loa erupt again in November 2022?

The previous eruption, in 1984, sent a lava flow within four miles of Hilo, close enough to light the city at night; the 2022 event lasted about two weeks.

Mauna Loa's summit caldera is called Mokuʻāweoweo, named for what?

The ʻāweoweo fish's colouring was thought to resemble the caldera's eruptive fires; the caldera floor lies up to 558 feet below the rim.

The 1959 eruption of Kīlauea Iki produced a lava fountain of roughly what height, a Hawaiian record?

The five-week eruption filled the pit crater with a lava lake whose crusted floor visitors now hike across; it is still cooling and shrinking.

Which paved park path crosses the cinder-buried rainforest destroyed by the 1959 Kīlauea Iki fountains?

Before the eruption the area was dense forest; the cone Puʻu Puaʻi built up beside it from the fountain fallout.

What is the Hawaiian name of the park's popular walk-through lava tube, long called Thurston Lava Tube?

It reopened in February 2020 after the 2018 earthquakes; an undeveloped 1,100-foot stretch beyond the lit section is closed to the public.

How long is the Chain of Craters Road, which winds from the East Rift down to the coast?

Lava has covered parts of it in 41 of the 53 years to 2018; its old link to Kalapana is now buried and usable only as an emergency escape route.

How big is Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park?

Around 130,000 acres, including Mauna Loa's summit, were made wilderness in 1978.

The 2003 purchase of the Kahuku Ranch, Hawaii's largest land acquisition, enlarged the park by what share?

The 115,788 acres cost $21.9 million from the estate of Samuel Mills Damon, with financing from The Nature Conservancy.

In which year did UNESCO list the park as a World Heritage Site?

It had been made an International Biosphere Reserve in 1980, and in 2012 it appeared on an America the Beautiful quarter.

The park was depicted on a coin in 2012 as part of which US Mint series?

It was the 14th design in the series, which honoured a national site from every state and territory.

What arid area on Kīlauea's southwest side contrasts with the park's rainforests?

It lies downwind of the summit vents, where acid rain and ash keep vegetation sparse.

The March 2008 explosion in Halemaʻumaʻu was the first explosive event there since which year?

It scattered debris over 74 acres and damaged the overlook, and followed the opening of a big sulphur dioxide vent.

Which anonymous panel chose Arthur Johnsen's 2003 painting of Pele to replace the 'Caucasian' one?

Johnsen's Pele holds a digging stick in one hand and the egg that hatched her sister Hiʻiaka in the other.

The 1929 painting of Pele that hung in the visitor center for four decades was criticised for what?

D. Howard Hitchcock painted it; his son donated it in 1966 and it was swapped out in 2005.

What rule does the Hawaiian principle of pono ask visitors to Hawaii Volcanoes to follow?

Eruptions are seen as sacred, a rebirth of the Earth, and rangers help revive traditions from canoe-making tools to gourd drums.

Pōhue Bay, added to the park in 2022, holds Hawaii's largest recorded quarry for what?

The 16,451 acres also protect anchialine ponds with red shrimp, turtle nesting beaches and a stretch of the ancient Ala Kahakai coastal trail.

Which endangered sea turtle nests on the park's coastline?

Known as honuʻea in Hawaiian, it shares the Pōhue coast with the Hawaiian monk seal.

Kīlauea was once thought to be a satellite of Mauna Loa; why?

It is in fact a separate volcano, the second-youngest product of the Hawaiian hotspot, with rift zones running 78 miles east and 22 miles west.

Roughly how old is Kīlauea?

It rose above the sea about 100,000 years ago and its oldest exposed lavas are just 2,800 years old.

Mauna Loa was long considered Earth's largest volcano until which submarine giant was recognised as bigger?

Mauna Loa remains the largest active volcano; the Pacific Plate will carry it off the hotspot in half a million to a million years.

Which naval officer led the 1840 US Exploring Expedition that camped in the park area en route to Mauna Loa?

Charles Wilkes wintered in Hawaii during his Pacific survey and picked Mauna Loa because it looked easier than Mauna Kea.

Mauna Loa's lava is described as what, which is why its eruptions are rarely explosive?

Eruptions in 1926 and 1950 still destroyed villages, and part of Hilo sits on flows from 1880-81.

The Chain of Craters Road was originally built in which year?

It first linked Crater Rim Drive to Makaopuhi Crater and was extended to Kalapana in 1959.

Kīlauea's summit sits on which coast of the island of Hawaiʻi?

It is one of five volcanoes that build the island; the youngest, Kamaʻehuakanaloa, is still underwater offshore.

How deep is the Kīlauea Iki pit crater, whose floor hikers can walk across?

Its floor is the crust of the 1959 lava lake, buckled into pressure ridges and still contracting about two centimetres a year.

By January 2005 the Puʻu ʻŌʻō eruption had added roughly how much new land to Hawaiʻi's southeast coast?

It also buried the coastal highway under lava up to 115 feet thick and destroyed the Wahaʻula heiau and visitor center.

Where is the park's main entrance?

The Kahuku District has its own entrance off Highway 11 near mile marker 70.

Which Hawaiian territorial delegate introduced the legislation that finally created the park?

Governor Frear had drafted a 1911 bill for a $50,000 Kilauea National Park; ranchers objected to the proposed boundaries.

Who first proposed the idea of a national park at Kīlauea, in 1903?

In 1907 the territory paid for fifty members of Congress and their wives to visit, complete with a dinner cooked over lava steam vents.

In which year was Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park designated an International Biosphere Reserve?

World Heritage status followed in 1987, and in 2012 the park appeared on the 14th America the Beautiful quarter.