Most national parks and monuments preserve the story of the park’s geological past—past climates, past tectonic history. At Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park on the Big Island of Hawai’i, Hawai’i’s past, present, and future is written in basalt—the cooled basalt that comprises the island and the still-molten basalt flows that snake their way to the ocean on the islands’ south-east shore.
The Big Island of Hawai'i is the southernmost island in the archipelago that comprises the islands in the state of Hawaii but that extends northwestward as a submersed chain of seamounts to the Aleutian archipelago of Alaska. The Big Island of Hawaii is the largest island and the only one in the chain still volcanically active.
See Google maps image to trace the Hawaiian island chain.
The US Geological Survey maintains the best site for Hawaiian volcanic activity.
Photo: night viewing of active basalt flows, Kilauea volcano on the Big Island.
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