Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes

The Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes lies within Katmai National Park and Preserve in Alaska, a roughly 40-square-mile area buried under volcanic ash. It was formed by the eruption of Novarupta on June 6 to 8, 1912, the largest eruption by volume of the 20th century, which expelled about 13 cubic kilometers of magma and buried the valley floor under ash flows as deep as 700 feet. Explorer Robert F. Griggs, surveying the aftermath for National Geographic in 1916, named the valley after the thousands of steam-venting fumaroles he found rising from its fissured floor; most of those fumaroles have since cooled and gone extinct, and the ash-covered terrain remains largely without vegetation today, now a research site and visitor destination reached by a 20-mile road from Brooks Camp.