The World's Most Beautiful Places
The Jonsrud viewpoint, in the Willamette Valley offers the visitor both a historic and scenic view of a beautiful stretch of Oregon. Through the valley below, passed the Barlow Road, also known as the Mt. Hood Road. This road was part of the larger Oregon Trail, and made it much easier for pioneers to reach the fertile valley along Oregon’s coast. On a clear day the conical peak of the Mt. Hood volcano rises prominently above the horizon. In Sandy, Oregon.
A view of Mt. Shasta in the Fall in northern California. By volume, Shasta is the largest stratovolcano (or composite volcano) in the Pacific Northwest’s Cascade Range. And even though its last known eruption was in 1250, its still considered active by geologists. At 14,179 feet, the mountain is the second tallest in the Cascades, after Mt. Rainier east of Seattle, Washington. Humans are known to have inhabited the area around the mountain for at least 7,000 years, and the mountain remains sacred to local Native American tribes. The region is also growing in popularity for tourists, and as a wilderness hiking and climbing destination.
Shiprock is a volcanic monadnock that rises 1,583 feet above the desert landscape of the Navajo Nation in San Juan County, New Mexico and is 7,177 feet above sea level. Multiple volcanic dikes radiate from it, including one pictured in the lower left of the image. The formation figures prominently in the religion, myth and traditions of the Navajo, and stood at the geographic and cultural center of the Ancient Puebloans of the Colorado Plateau, also known as the Anasazi. Three major Anasazi sites, Chaco Canyon, Mesa Verde, and Aztec Ruins National Monument reside less than a hundred miles from the volcanic plug
Shiprock is made of volcanic breccia and dikes of igneous rock. It is what remains of the upper core of a volcano that formed 27 million years ago.
The name of the formation derives from an anglicized perspective of what the rock looks like, in this case a 19th-century clipper ship. The Navajo have a different name, Tsé Bitʼaʼí, which means winged rock, and comes from the legend of a great bird.
Navajo Tourism – Shiprock
New Mexico Department of Geology – Shiprock