Sometime between the years 1040 and 1100, the ground trembled, strange noises booming from inside the earth. The people living near the future Wupatki pueblo site took warning and evacuated the area. Soon after, lava spewed high into the air, spraying out of a fissure in the earth. The molten rock crashed back to earth as lava bombs and cinders, covering the area.

As more and more eruptions occurred, more cinders fell to the earth, creating a cone around the fissure. Dust cascaded down more than 800 miles away. Two massive lava flows seeped out, destroying everything in their wake. After six months to a year of eruptions, the cinder cone erupted a final time, throwing a blanket of red and yellow embers over the rim. It was these red embers that inspired intrepid explorer John Wesley Powell to give the volcano its name, Sunset Crater.
Trees and plants are finally creeping up between the cracks of lava in this once blasted area.
A blanket of snow covered the black, chunky lava.
It's a beautiful area now, but it isn't hard to imagine it 900 years ago, the air thick with ash, and the crackling of cooling and oozing lava filling the landscape.