Pinnacles National Park United States

Legendary

See eroded rock formations leftover from an extinct volcano.

Photo by thinkrorbot

The volcano that made these rocks isn't here anymore. It's about 195 miles southeast, near a town called Lancaster, and only half of it is there.

The other half is this park.

Around 23 million years ago, a volcano erupted in what is now southern California. Later, the San Andreas Fault cracked straight through the middle of it.

The fault marks the line where two huge pieces of the Earth's crust slide past each other. The western piece has been creeping northwest ever since, carrying its half of the volcano with it, a little more than half an inch a year.

Over millions of years, wind and rain carved that volcanic rock into the towering spires and cliffs that give the park its name. The geologists who worked all this out helped prove the theory of plate tectonics.

The park also has caves, but not the usual kind. Earthquakes shook huge boulders loose from the canyon walls, and they jammed together overhead, leaving dark passages underneath.

These are called talus caves. Bear Gulch Cave is the biggest, and it's home to the largest colony of Townsend's big-eared bats anywhere between Mexico and Canada.

More than 13 species of bats live in the park. Parts of the caves close for a few months each year so the bats can raise their pups in peace.

Above the rocks fly California condors, the largest birds in North America, with wings that stretch nearly 10 feet. They almost went extinct, dropping to 22 birds in the whole world in the 1980s.

Scientists bred them in captivity and started releasing them here in 2003. Dozens now live in the park, each tagged with a number so researchers can track it.

President Theodore Roosevelt first protected the area as a national monument in 1908. President Barack Obama upgraded it to a national park on January 10, 2013.

Bring a flashlight and scramble through Bear Gulch Cave to the reservoir at the top, checking first that the cave is open. Hike the High Peaks Trail, where steps are carved into the rock and condors often soar at eye level. Come in spring, when wildflowers bloom and the park is home to nearly 400 kinds of bees, more than any other place on Earth.