Image of the Day for October 28, 2026

A national monument since the 1920s, Chiricahua is America's newest national park.

Oct 28, 2026

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Some 27 million years ago, a volcano in what's now southeastern Arizona unleashed a spectacular series of eruptions, strewing more than 1,000 times as much volcanic material across the landscape as Mount St. Helens did in 1980.

The explosive eruptions blanketed the region, part of the Chiricahua Apache Nation’s traditional lands, with ash and pumice . Layered into this were massive pyroclastic flows that hardened into deposits of welded rhyolitic tuff that in some areas were nearly 1,600 feet (500 meters) thick, about three times the height of the Washington Monument.…