Amboy Crater

Amboy Crater formed when rising basalt magma reached the surface and blasted out fountains of cinders that piled up into a symmetrical cone. Geologists put its age at somewhere around 79,000 years, which makes it very young as volcanoes go, part of one of the freshest volcanic fields in the United States. The cone stands about 250 feet high and roughly 1,500 feet across.

The most telling feature is the gap in the western wall. During the eruption the lava rose inside the crater and then broke through that side, flooding out over the surrounding desert. The result is a spreading apron of black basalt covering something close to 24 square miles, studded with collapsed lava tubes, sinks, and low spatter cones. Standing on that dark, crunching ground, you get a clear sense of a landscape that was molten within the span of human-like time.

In recognition of all this, the site was designated a National Natural Landmark in 1973, and it now sits inside the much larger Mojave Trails National Monument, protected as an open, undeveloped stretch of the desert.

A trail leads from the day-use parking area out across the lava field toward the cone, a few miles round trip over exposed ground. The clever part comes near the end: rather than scrambling straight up the loose outer slope, the route uses that western breach to walk you right in through the gap and into the bowl of the crater itself.

Inside, the walls curve up around you and the desert drops away, and a short climb gets you onto the rim for a long view over the black flows and the pale salt flats beyond. The parking area has shaded picnic tables, restrooms, interpretive signs, and a short accessible path to a covered overlook for anyone not up for the full hike.

Amboy Crater is inseparable from the road it sits beside. This length of the National Trails Highway is old Route 66, the Mother Road that carried Dust Bowl migrants and midcentury travelers across the Mojave, and the crater was a natural curiosity that drew people to pull over long before it was formally protected.

Just up the road, the town of Amboy has faded to a near-ghost, kept alive largely by the restored Roy's Motel and Cafe and its tall googie sign, a beloved Route 66 landmark. To the south, the white expanse of Bristol Dry Lake has long been worked for salt. Together they give the crater a fittingly lonely, end-of-the-map feeling.

The plants and animals here are the tough specialists of the eastern Mojave: creosote and desert shrubs, side-blotched and zebra-tailed lizards, snakes, and the occasional kit fox or jackrabbit moving at dawn and dusk. Little grows on the raw basalt itself, which is part of what makes the flows feel so stark.

This is harsh country. Summer temperatures are brutal and the ground offers almost no shade, so the crater is best from fall through spring, and always with more water than you think you need. The reward for the effort and the remoteness is the sky: far from any city, Amboy delivers some of the darkest, most star-filled nights you will find within a few hours of Los Angeles.

The closest Boutel™ stays, so you can turn this stop into an overnight. Each is an independently owned, editorially selected place to stay.