Craters of the Moon Historic Context Statements

Explorations and Surveys in the Craters of the Moon Region, 1879-1937
SUMMARY

Exploration played an important part in understanding the Snake River Plain for the purposes of national expansion, settlement, and resource development in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Beginning in the 1830s and lasting through the 1870s, federally sponsored or federally-connected explorations investigated the plain as part of this multifaceted mission and as part of larger investigations of the West. Army officers, naturalists, artists, and geologists formed the ranks of these expeditions. Whether reconnoitering the new territory, plotting overland trail and railroad routes, or cataloguing the West's natural and cultural resources, the surveys created a sweeping view of the region. Most of these explorers steered clear of the forbidding Craters country. Though observers, some trained in geology, recognized the geological significance and unique beauty of the Craters district in the late nineteenth century, it was the work of geologists in the early twentieth century that revealed the area's importance. Surveys by Israel C. Russell and Harold T. Stearns between 1901 and the late 1920s were the most notable. But others continued to study new tracts of this country into the 1930s.

Coinciding with these surveys was a growing awareness of the Craters region by the neighboring populace. Clouded in mystery, the lava territory drew ranchers, settlers, and local outdoors people to investigate the region for themselves. Robert W. Limbert epitomized their activities. Throughout the 1920s, his explorations, and his writings, photographs, and publicity of those explorations brought the region to the attention of the state and nation, all of which culminated in the establishment of Craters of the Moon National Monument.

The General Land Office surveys of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries also made the country more identifiable; the grid of township and range brought the Craters country out of its mysterious beginnings. It had been mapped. But it was not fully understood from a geological perspective, and between the 1960s and the 1980s geologists continued to study the monument to better understand the age of its lava flows (and myriad formations) and the history of its eruptions.