page_title: El Malpais National Monument
section_title: Geography and geology
hierarchical_section_title: El Malpais National Monument / Geography and geology
caption_attribution_description: English: View of El Malpais Lava Fields — in the El Malpais National Conservation Area and El Malpais National Monument, northwestern New Mexico. Seen from Cebollita Mesa (right foreground), and within the Zuni-Bandera Volcanic Field lava flow formation. Credits by Bryce Chackerian; May 2005. en:Category:Images of New Mexico
context_page_description: El Malpais National Monument is a National Monument located in western New Mexico, in the Southwestern United States. The name El Malpais is from the Spanish term Malpaís, meaning badlands, due to the extremely barren and dramatic volcanic field that covers much of the park's area.
  It is on the Trails of the Ancients Byway, one of the designated New Mexico Scenic Byways.
context_section_description: The lava flows, cinder cones, and other volcanic features of El Malpais are part of the Zuni-Bandera volcanic field, the second largest volcanic field in the Basin and Range Province. This volcanically active area on the southeast margin of the Colorado Plateau is at the intersection of the Rio Grande Rift Basin, with its deep normal faulting, and the ancient Jemez Lineament. These two features provide the crustal weaknesses that recent magmatic intrusions and Cenozoic volcanism are attributed to.
  The rugged pāhoehoe and ʻaʻā lava flows of the Zuni-Bandera eruptions (also called the Grants Lava Flows) filled a large basin, created by normal faulting associated with the Rio Grande Rift, between the high mesas of the Acoma Pueblo to the east, Mt. Taylor to the north, and the Zuni Mountain anticline to the northwest. Vents associated with these flows include Bandera Crater, El Calderon, and several other cinder cones; more than a dozen older cinder cones follow a roughly north-south distribution along the Chain of Craters west of the monument.
caption: View of El Malpais Lava Fields and sandstone bluff
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