We made the drive to Kilbourne Hole early in the winter when we were staying outside of Deming, NM.
Kilbourne Hole is the remnant of a volcanic explosion crater.
The Crater can be found a 2-hour plus drive southwest of Las Cruces.
Most of the bottom of the hole is private land so
permission from the owner should be secured if you plan to enter.
We chose not to enter but did drive the entire perimeter.
The Crater's age is somewhere between 100,000 and 24,000 years old.
Molten rock came into contact with subsurface water and vaporized a vast quantity of the water, turning it into super-heated steam.
Probably over the course of a few weeks, it erupted in a series of explosions.
There was so much energy that it blew more than 550 million yards of ash, rock and alluvium over a 20 to 30 square mile area.
A comparable quantity fell back into the Crater.
Eventually, portions of the Crater collapsed inward to the present size.
The depression is elliptical in shape and 1.7 miles in length (shown here in panorama)
and
1 mile across.
It took 8 photos melded into 1 panorama to encompass that 1.7 miles.
You are looking across the width which is 1 mile from edge to edge.
The crusts of the Kilbourne Hole volcanic bombs are dull black or brown, but when broken open, they often reveal a brilliant, sparkling yellow and green interior of olivine glass granules.
The northern rim has yielded jewel-quality olivine crystals, called peridot.
One of our objectives that day was to find find just one of these gems which is also my birthstone.
We had a good time searching but, I'm sure at least hundreds of other folks have scoured the area long before us.
It would also likely have helped if we had a good idea for what we were looking!
It would also likely have helped if we had a good idea for what we were looking!
The same area also yields high quality augite, a mineral which occurs as prismatic crystals of deep green or black.
These we found in large numbers.
What fun!
And because this was BLM land
(Bureau of Land Management),
the crystals are fair game to be collected in a reasonable quantity.
Three of them are shown as clustered here this afternoon.
The green and black combination is beautiful while the green glitters
in the sunlight.
As we have had little sunlight since arriving home
(and none this afternoon)
the beauty is invisible in this photo.
Much of the information above I've copied from a brochure printed
by the
BLM Las Cruces Field Office.
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