46 Fun Facts About Hawaii Volcanoes National Park

What geologic feature built the volcanoes of Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park and the rest of the island chain?

A hotspot: the Pacific Plate slowly carries each volcano northwest away from it, so the islands grow older toward Kauaʻi and the Big Island's are youngest.

What is the name Kīlauea usually translated as, a nod to its frequent eruptions?

Much spreading, or spewing: lava pours out so often that flows younger than 1,000 years cover about 90 percent of its surface.

Mauna Loa's name translates as what?

Long mountain: its high-volume lava flows travel long distances, building a broad shield that makes up more than half of the island of Hawaiʻi.

Mauna Loa's summit falls roughly 120 feet short of which neighbouring volcano's summit?

Mauna Kea: yet measured from its base on the seafloor, Mauna Loa rises about 30,000 feet, more than Everest stands above sea level.

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

Pele: in 1824 High Chiefess Kapiʻolani defied her at Kīlauea, eating berries sacred to the goddess without first offering her any.

When Hawaii National Park was created in 1916, it also included which volcano on another island?

Haleakalā on Maui stayed part of Hawaii National Park until 1961, when Congress made it a separate park and the Big Island section was renamed.

Which president signed the bill creating Hawaii National Park, weeks before signing the act that founded the National Park Service?

Woodrow Wilson signed it on August 1, 1916, nine years after the territory treated fifty members of Congress to a Kīlauea dinner cooked over lava vents.

Which threatened bird, Hawaii's state bird, is often seen along the roads of Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park?

Nēnē: hunting and introduced predators left only a few dozen of these geese by the mid-20th century, before captive breeding helped bring them back.

Which famous troops built a trail from Kīlauea to Mauna Loa's summit in 1915?

Buffalo Soldiers: men of the all-Black 25th Infantry broke up lava with 12-pound hammers and carried fill in gunny sacks on their backs.

Which future World War II general helped plan the 1935 bombing of a Mauna Loa lava flow heading for Hilo?

George S. Patton: Army planes dropped the bombs that December, but many geologists doubt they did much, since the flow waned over days rather than stopping.

What is the only hotel located inside Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park?

Volcano House: after a kitchen fire burned the hotel to the ground in 1940, a new building on the crater rim opened the next year.

Which famous author visited Kīlauea in 1866 while reporting from Hawaii for a California newspaper?

Mark Twain: back in San Francisco his island letters became the basis of his first public lecture, and he later retold the volcano visit in Roughing It.

Which traces in Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park are traditionally linked to warriors caught in Kīlauea's explosive 1790 eruption?

Footprints in hardened ash: Ruy Finch came upon them purely by accident in 1919, while hiking out to study a new eruption.

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

Thomas Jaggar: an MIT geology professor, he had investigated the 1902 Mont Pelée disaster in Martinique before choosing Kīlauea for a permanent observatory.

Which federal agency runs the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory?

US Geological Survey: it first took charge in 1924, but the National Park Service ran the observatory from 1935 until the Survey returned in 1947.

Which coastal community, cherished for its black sand beaches, did Kīlauea's long east rift eruption bury in 1990?

Kalapana: lava crept into the community from March 1990, and by the end of that year about 100 homes lay buried.

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

Puʻu ʻŌʻō: lava from its eruption reached the sea and added hundreds of acres of new land to the island.

In May 2018, lava fissures broke out inside which Puna subdivision, forcing residents to flee?

Leilani Estates: lava from its fissures ran all the way to the sea at Kapoho Bay, and Hawaii County counted 716 homes destroyed.

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

The lava lake drained and the crater collapsed: 62 collapse events dropped the ground by more than 1,600 feet, and the summit area stayed closed for months.

What appeared at the bottom of Kīlauea's Halemaʻumaʻu crater in summer 2019, for the first time in recorded history?

A water lake: it kept rising for more than a year, until a December 2020 eruption boiled it away and began refilling the crater with lava.

Mauna Loa's 2022 eruption buried the road to a nearby observatory famous for tracking what?

Carbon dioxide in the air: its measurements began in 1958 and form the Keeling Curve, the record that shows the gas climbing year after year.

Why did US officials keep Mauna Loa's April 1942 eruption out of the news?

Its glow could guide enemy bombers: yet when its lava threatened the ʻOlaʻa flume, the Army Air Force dropped its own bombs on the flow, with limited success.

When scientists drilled into Kīlauea Iki's 1959 lava lake, what did they hit just nine feet down?

Molten rock: red-hot lava oozed up the borehole four months after the eruption, and the lake did not fully solidify until the mid-1990s.

The walk-through lava tube Nāhuku in Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park has long carried which family's name?

Thurston: Lorrin Thurston, the newspaper publisher who campaigned for the park, explored the tube in 1913, and it was named after him.

Why are kīpuka like Kīpukapuaulu in Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park havens for rare species?

Lava flows ring and isolate them: these islands of older forest shelter native species and later seed new growth on the flows around them.

Which endangered animal found in Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park is Hawaii's only native land mammal?

Hawaiian hoary bat: its ancestors flew across the open Pacific from the mainland to reach the islands.

Before Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park bought its vast Kahuku unit in 2003, what was the land?

A cattle ranch: buying the roughly 116,000 acres of Kahuku Ranch on Mauna Loa's slopes enlarged the park by more than half.

In 1987, Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park became the first place in Hawaii to earn which international status?

World Heritage Site: UNESCO cited the park as a unique example of islands being built by ongoing volcanic activity.

Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park appeared on a 2012 coin in which US Mint series?

America the Beautiful Quarters: a 2008 act of Congress set up the series to honour a national park or site in every state, DC and territory.

What arid area on Kīlauea's southwest side contrasts with the rainforests of Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park?

Kaʻū Desert: trade winds carry the volcano's sulphur dioxide over it, turning rain into acid that stunts plants, though it is not a true desert.

What killed the only person to die in Halemaʻumaʻu's explosive eruption of May 1924?

Rocks hurled from the crater: the victim had ventured too close to watch, and the blasts threw ash miles into the sky.

Which anonymous panel chose Arthur Johnsen's 2003 painting of a volcano deity for the visitor center?

Native Hawaiian elders: they picked it from 140 entries, and it replaced a portrait that had hung in the visitor center since 1966.

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

Do not take lava rocks: yet every year the park receives rocks mailed back by visitors, often blaming them for bad luck.

Why did an 1857 tax assessor list Kīlauea's 1790 eruption, 'the falling sands', among famous events?

To estimate people's ages: most Hawaiians did not know their birth years, but they could say which famous event their births came near.

Which endangered sea turtle nests on the coast of Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park?

Hawksbill: hunting for its beautiful shell, prized as tortoiseshell for jewelry, once nearly drove the species to extinction.

Why was Kīlauea long thought to be a mere satellite of Mauna Loa?

It looks like a bulge on its flank: yet research shows Kīlauea has its own magma plumbing, rising from more than 60 km deep.

What is the name for lava that hardens with a smooth, ropy surface, common on Kīlauea?

Pāhoehoe: its flows often crust over into lava tubes that keep the lava hot, so it can travel far.

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

Tamu Massif was hailed in 2013 as Earth's largest single volcano, but later magnetic mapping cast doubt on whether it is one volcano at all.

Which naval officer led the 1840 US Exploring Expedition that camped at Kīlauea on its way to Mauna Loa?

Charles Wilkes: his party then spent three miserable weeks camped on Mauna Loa's freezing summit, taking scientific measurements through snowstorms.

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

Silica-poor and very fluid: such runny lava can race downhill, and in 1950 one Mauna Loa flow reached the sea in only about three hours.

Which 1969-74 Kīlauea eruption buried parts of Chain of Craters Road, closing it until 1979?

Mauna Ulu: the road reopened in 1979, but in 1986 lava from another Kīlauea eruption cut it again.

On which side of the island of Hawaiʻi does Kīlauea lie?

Southeastern: its south flank is slowly sliding toward the sea, by up to about 10 centimetres a year.

What does the name Kīlauea Iki mean?

Little Kīlauea: 1988 drilling found its 1959 lava lake deeper than expected, probably because the old crater floor sank during the eruption.

What killed two campers at Halapē, on the coast of Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park, after a 1975 earthquake?

A tsunami: the magnitude 7.2 quake struck as the Hilina Slump, a vast block of Kīlauea's south flank, lurched several metres seaward.

Which Hawaiian territorial delegate introduced the bill that finally created Hawaii National Park?

Jonah Kūhiō Kalanianaʻole: Governor Walter Frear drafted a park bill in 1911, and after several failed attempts it passed in 1916.

Which Hawaiian royal, who still worshipped the old gods, did some Hawaiians credit with stopping an 1881 lava flow near Hilo?

Ruth Keʻelikōlani: she reportedly made offerings at the advancing flow, and when that branch stopped short of Hilo, some credited her with saving the town.