Katmai National Park United States

Legendary

Named after Mount Katmai, a major eruption in 1912 created the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes.

Photo by Katmai National Park and Preserve

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On June 6, 1912, the sun disappeared over this part of Alaska for 60 hours. Ash fell so thickly on Kodiak Island, 100 miles away, that people couldn't see a lantern held at arm's length.

The blast was heard in Fairbanks, more than 500 miles north. It was the largest volcanic eruption anywhere in the world during the entire 20th century.

For years, people blamed Mount Katmai. Its summit had collapsed into a huge crater, so the answer seemed obvious.

They were wrong. A brand-new vent had opened about 6 miles away, and that's where the magma actually came out.

Scientists named it Novarupta, meaning "new eruption." As magma drained out from underneath Mount Katmai, the mountain's top caved in, leaving a crater 2,000 feet deep.

Mount Katmai is a stratovolcano, the classic cone shape built from layers of hardened lava and ash. Its crater is now filled with a lake more than 800 feet deep.

Nearby, the eruption buried an entire valley under ash up to 700 feet thick. When a scientist named Robert Griggs explored it in 1916, steam was hissing out of thousands of cracks in the ground.

He called it the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes. The steam vents have long since gone quiet, but the strange, empty landscape is still there.

That valley is why the park exists. It was protected in 1918 to preserve the eruption's aftermath.

The park has around 18 volcanoes in total, and seven of them have been active since 1900. It's one of the most volcanically restless places in North America.

These days most visitors come for something else entirely. About 2,200 brown bears live here, one of the largest protected populations anywhere.

Watch bears catch salmon at Brooks Falls from the viewing platforms in July. Take a bus tour to the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes and walk out across the ash. Fly in by floatplane, since there are no roads into the park at all.