# @downinnadesert on Instagram

- **Type:** Image
- **Original URL:** https://www.instagram.com/p/DdMrHdkj_8w
- **Gondola URL:** https://gondola.cc/posts/70299971-downinnadesert-instagram
- **Thumbnail:** https://img.gondola.cc/tr:w-,h-,fo-auto/postThumbnails/443c7ae250.jpg
- **Posted:** 2026-09-12T18:52:46.000+00:00
- **Account Owner:** Down In The Desert🌵 (@downinnadesert) — https://gondola.cc/downinnadesert

## Caption

Around the year 1085, northeast of where Flagstaff sits today, the ground split open along a fissure nearly six miles long.

Lava shot hundreds of feet into the air in what geologists call a curtain of fire. Ash and cinders covered hundreds of square miles, lava filled nearby valleys, and by the time it ended, a new cinder cone stood roughly 1,000 feet above the landscape.

And people were living right there.

Archaeologists call them Sinagua, part of the ancestral Puebloan world of northern Arizona. Hopi and Zuni oral traditions still preserve memories connected to the eruption.

The people closest to the volcano appear to have escaped before the worst of it. Pithouses buried by the eruption were found with very few belongings inside, suggesting people had warning and time to leave.

But somebody went back.

Archaeologists have found pieces of volcanic rock with corn impressions pressed into them near Sunset Crater. Researchers believe corn was deliberately placed near active volcanic features, possibly as part of a ritual during the eruption.

Afterward, the eruption changed farming across the region. Thinner layers of ash helped soil hold moisture, and communities grew around places like Wupatki.

Then in the 1920s, Hollywood almost damaged the crater itself.

A film company proposed using dynamite on part of Sunset Crater for a movie. Scientist H.S. Colton helped stop it, and the controversy helped push the area toward federal protection.

Today, Sunset Crater is still there about 15 miles northeast of Flagstaff.

And while Sunset Crater itself is not expected to erupt again, scientists say the San Francisco Volcanic Field will likely erupt somewhere again in the future.

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#SunsetCrater #Flagstaff #Wupatki #ArizonaHistory #ArizonaNews DownInnaDesert

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## Tags

flagstaff, arizonahistory, arizonanews, sunsetcrater, wupatki

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