Jordan Craters

About Jordan Craters

Jordan Craters volcanic field consists of well-preserved basaltic lava flows and scoria cones that are the youngest and northernmost of a group of three Quaternary lava fields covering an area of 250 km2 in SE Oregon. The Pleistocene Clarks Butte shield volcano and Rocky Butte (Lava Butte) lava fields lie to the south, along the trend of regional Basin and Range faulting. Jordan Craters lie on the Owyhee-Oregon plateau at the SE end of a series of widely scattered young volcanic fields extending SE from Bend, Oregon. Coffeepot Crater at the NW end of the field was the source, about 3,200 years ago or later, of one of Oregon's youngest lava flows. The flows covered 75 km2 with 1.6 km3 of olivine-basalt pahoehoe and dammed local drainages, forming the two small Upper and Lower Cow Lakes at the SE end of the lava field. Jordan Craters is renowned for its excellent exposures of a wide variety of youthful lava-flow features and has similarities to Holocene basaltic flows of Idaho's Snake River Plain to the east.