Explore Idaho's Craters of the Moon: 100 Years of Lava Landscapes and Adventure

Celebrate the centennial of Idaho’s dusty lava wonderland at Craters of the Moon—and then clean up your act afterward

written by James Sinks

As he zigzagged an otherworldly expanse of lava flows, blackened buttes and craggy caves in central Idaho—and on rocks so jagged underfoot it left his Airedale terrier’s paws bloodied—Boise explorer Robert Limbert remarked that the more than 600 volcanic square miles looked like a desolate moonscape.

And yet at the same time, also strikingly beautiful, he wrote in National Geographic in 1924, as part of a bid to secure federal protection. “It is a place of color and silence,” he wrote in dispatches from the Craters of the Moon. “It is the play of light at sunset across this lava that charms the spectator.”

The name stuck. The same year, President Calvin Coolidge formally designated the Craters of the Moon National Monument, he said, to conserve its “weird and scenic landscape.”

The moon-like surface at Craters of the Moon National Monument and Preserve.

This year, the lava wonderland celebrates its 100th birthday, and sort of like our truth-challenged friends proclaim when we get older: It doesn’t look like it’s aged one bit.

Only in this case, it’s accurate. While the boundaries of the protected area have been expanded several times, the landscape looks just as stark and brutal, with trails through lava fields interspersed with scraggly juniper, sage and bunchgrass. The monument still has the same charming and inviting names for its geographic features: Yellowjacket Waterhole, Inferno Chasm, Devil’s Orchard. And also, you still don’t want to be barefoot.

As national park visitor traffic goes, Craters of the Moon National Monument and Preserve isn’t a list-topper. An estimated 257,598 people visited in 2023, according to National Park Service data, a sliver of the 4.5 million who visited Yellowstone and less than half of the 559,976 who headed to Crater Lake. Yet solitude is part of the appeal.

Co-managed by the National Park Service and the Bureau of Land Management, the expanse—created by a 62-mile-long crack in the Earth’s crust—is largely undeveloped: There’s no lodge, no restaurants and one visitor center, named after the influential explorer Limbert.

An easy 1.6-mile out-and-back trail from the visitor center takes you to two of the more than 700 caves that have been cataloged on the site. A separate 2-mile pathway leads to rocky molds of ancient trees that were once encased in lava.

Idaho has been called a land of contrasts, from its weather to its politics to its soaring mountains and deep valleys. So while the Craters of the Moon will beckon with ways to get dusty and dirty, you’ll be pleased to know that—nearby—you’ll find ample opportunities to clean up a bit.

On the way, stop in tiny Arco, the closest city to the park and in the 1950s the first American city to be fully powered by nuclear energy, and recharge at Pickle’s Place, where you’ll find burgers, taters, homemade seasonings and a kosher pickle appetizer for $1.99.

Where there’s lava, there’s heat, and that means hot springs. Head 120 miles southeast to soak in an assortment of pools at Lava Hot Springs Foundation World Famous Hot Springs, located on what was once part of a Native American reservation. If mellow soaking isn’t your jam, nearby in the hopping summer resort there’s a geothermal-heated, Olympic-sized pool and plunging waterslides.

Lava Hot Springs for a mellow soak does a body good.

On Main Street in Lava Hot Springs, you can also rent inner tubes from roadside stands and bounce down the local stretch of the Portneuf River. The trek may only take about twenty minutes, but it has cred: In 2016, USA Today called it “America’s Best River for Tubing.”

Tubing the Portneuf River near Craters of the Moon.

If you’re feeling lucky and want to clean up figuratively, or at least try, the Shoshone-Bannock Casino Hotel lets you try your hand at bingo and virtual card games and craps. The casino is on the Fort Hall Reservation, north of the city of Pocatello, which was created in a 1868 treaty with Chief Pocatello and remaining Shoshone that had not been killed by the U.S. Army in the nearby Bear River Massacre of 1863.

In the city of Pocatello itself, you’ll find a celebration of everything clean—from vacuums to clean living—at the one-of-a-kind Museum of Clean. Started by a graduate of local Idaho State University, the cavernous and irreverent museum is an homage to not just cleaning tools and products, but also clean arteries and clean jokes.

Afterward, cleanse your palate with tapas and wine downtown at unassuming and highly rated Brick 243 Gastropub. Feel like maybe dirtying those arteries a bit? Carnivore fare awaits including bison at steak-and-pasta spot The Yellowstone Restaurant, in a circa-1915 hotel next to the train station. After-dinner relaxation options fill the liquor list next door at 313 Whiskey Bar, where the finale can be both clean and neat.