Santa Ana Volcano

Santa Ana Volcano, also known by its indigenous Nahuatl name Ilamatepec, is the tallest volcano in El Salvador, rising to roughly 2,381 meters in the country's western Santa Ana department near the city that shares its name. It is a stratovolcano built from layered andesitic and basaltic lava and ash, with a summit crater holding a turquoise-colored crater lake whose color comes from dissolved sulfur and other volcanic minerals; a small cinder cone sits within the crater from a more recent eruptive phase. The volcano's most significant recent eruption came in October 2005, a sudden explosive event that sent rocks and ash over nearby coffee plantations and the town of Coatepeque, killing at least two people and forcing evacuations, its first major eruption in roughly a century. Santa Ana forms part of the Cordillera de Apaneca-Ilamatepec mountain range along with the nearby Izalco and Cerro Verde volcanoes, all products of the Central America Volcanic Arc formed by the subduction of the Cocos Plate beneath the Caribbean Plate. This entity documents Santa Ana Volcano specifically as a geological formation, El Salvador's highest stratovolcano, whose 2005 eruption was its first major activity in about a century.