Newberry Volcanic National Monument: Oregon's Other Volcano

Newberry Volcano does not look like a volcano. Standing on Highway Ninety-Seven south of Bend, you see a broad, flat-sided mountain rising gradually from the desert floor, more like a broad hill than the sharp-edged cones of the Cascades. That shape is the giveaway. Newberry is a shield volcano, built up over hundreds of thousands of years by flows of relatively fluid basaltic lava that spread outward in every direction rather than building a narrow peak.

The caldera at the summit, accessible by road from the highway, is seven hundred feet deep and holds two lakes. Between the lakes, the Big Obsidian Flow is one of the youngest lava flows in Oregon, erupted approximately thirteen hundred years ago. The obsidian is black and glassy and sharp enough to cut, and Indigenous people quarried it here for projectile points and tools for thousands of years. Obsidian from Newberry has been traced in the archaeological record as far away as British Columbia and the central Great Plains.

The monument, administered by the Deschutes National Forest, also contains Lava Butte, a cinder cone that formed about seventy-six hundred years ago and whose crater can be reached by trail or, in summer, by a fee shuttle. The road to the summit overlooks the Deschutes lava fields, a vast apron of basalt that covers much of what would otherwise be forest.

The Deschutes lava tube caves, including Lava River Cave southeast of Bend, were formed by the same volcanic activity. Lava River Cave is more than a mile long, accessible with a lantern rental, and stays at about forty-two degrees year-round. It is one of the few places in central Oregon where you can escape summer heat simply by walking underground.