Craters of the Moon's Indian Tunnel
Photographer: Ray BorenSummary Author: Ray Boren
When perched above or deep within Indian Tunnel, a cavernous lava tube in Idaho’s Craters of the Moon National Monument and Preserve, it isn’t difficult to imagine super-heated magma flowing beneath this black-basalt landscape like an awesome molten river. Many of the park’s lava fields flowed as recently as 2,000 to 15,000 years ago — relatively recent events on a geologic time scale. But now its subway-like corridors are lithified, with rock arteries like Indian Tunnel gradually collapsing and creating pits, caves, boulder piles and gaping ceiling holes, as in these photographs, taken on June 22, 2024. For scale, each image shows a single tiny human under a different Indian Tunnel skylight.
The National Park Service has documented more than 700 caves within Craters of the Moon, most created by lava tubes, such as Indian Tunnel, but also by fissures and differential weathering. Lava tubes form when an active lava stream cools, creating a self-insulated corridor that allows the lava inside to continue to flow, sometimes for great distances. Indian Tunnel is along Caves Trail, an asphalt path off the park’s main auto loop. A free cave permit is required from the visitor center to visit it and Dewdrop Cave, when they are open, in part to caution visitors about white-nose syndrome, a disease that can afflict bats.
Craters of the Moon is celebrating its centennial in 2024, for the park was set aside in an Antiquities Act proclamation by U.S. President Calvin Coolidge on May 2, 1924, preserving “a weird and scenic landscape, peculiar to itself.” Today the rugged and remote lava field landscape and its more than two-dozen cinder and spatter cones encompass about 753,000 acres (3,050 sq km), along Idaho’s fissured Great Rift and the vast Snake River Plain volcanic province.
Craters of the Moon National Monument, Idaho Coordinates: 43.46167, -113.56271
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