Halemaumau Crater - Early History

Early History

Early eruptions were only recorded by oral history. One large one in 1790 killed several people, and left footprints in hardened ash of some ancient Hawaiians killed by pyroclastic flows.

William Ellis, an English missionary and amateur ethnographer and geologist, published the first description of Halemaʻumaʻu as it appeared in 1823.

Astonishment and awe for some moments rendered us mute, and like statues, we stood fixed to the spot, with our eyes riveted on the abyss below. Immediately before us yawned an immense gulf, in the form of a crescent, about two miles (3 km) in length, from north-east to south-west, nearly a mile in width, and apparently 800 feet (240 m) deep. The bottom was covered with lava, and the south-west and northern parts of it were one vast flood of burning matter, in a state of terrific ebullition, rolling to and fro its "fiery surge" and flaming billows.

In 1866 Mark Twain, an American humorist, satirist, lecturer and writer hiked to the Caldera floor.

He wrote the following account of the lake of molten lava which he found there:

It was like gazing at the sun at noon-day, except that the glare was not quite so white. At unequal distances all around the shores of the lake were nearly white-hot chimneys or hollow drums of lava, four or five feet high, and up through them were bursting gorgeous sprays of lava-gouts and gem spangles, some white, some red and some golden--a ceaseless bombardment, and one that fascinated the eye with its unapproachable splendor. The mere distant jets, sparkling up through an intervening gossamer veil of vapor, seemed miles away; and the further the curving ranks of fiery fountains receded, the more fairy-like and beautiful they appeared.

Another missionary, Titus Coan, observed and wrote about eruptions in the 19th century. Geologist Thomas Jaggar opened an observatory in 1912, and the area became Hawaii Volcanoes National Park in 1916.

The level of the lava lake varied over the decades and at times was only 30 metres (100 ft) below the crater rim. In 1924, unusual explosive eruptions sent dust high into the atmosphere and doubled the diameter of the crater. Fractures allowed the lava lake to drain to the east until its surface was 366 metres (1,200 ft) below the caldera floor. Subsequent eruptions have mostly refilled the crater. Most of the current crater floor was formed in 1974. A 1982 eruption covered a small portion of the northeastern crater floor.