Masaya Volcano

Masaya Volcano is a large basaltic shield-and-caldera volcanic complex in western Nicaragua, roughly 20 kilometers south of the capital Managua, reaching about 635 meters at its highest point. It sits within the broader Masaya Caldera, a roughly 6-by-11-kilometer depression formed by a massive eruption several thousand years ago, and within that caldera the active Santiago crater has held a persistently glowing, degassing lava lake intermittently visible since colonial times, one of only a handful of long-lived lava lakes on Earth. Spanish colonists in the 16th century, believing the glow to be liquid gold, erected a cross, La Cruz de Bobadilla, at the crater rim to exorcise what they took for the mouth of Hell, a cross whose replica still stands there today. The volcano is one of Nicaragua's most continuously active, releasing a persistent plume of sulfur dioxide gas that has periodically damaged crops and affected respiratory health in surrounding communities, and it is monitored closely as part of Masaya Volcano National Park, Nicaragua's first national park. This entity documents Masaya Volcano specifically as a geological formation, a basaltic caldera complex whose Santiago crater holds one of the world's few persistent lava lakes.