Kilbourne Hole

Kilbourne Hole (center) and Hunt's Hole (lower right), with White Sands National Park lit by the sun in the distance beyond the Organ Mountains
Basalt cliffs of Kilbourne Hole, looking northwest from near the southwest corner. The cliffs come from the earlier Cenozoic Afton basalt flow; the magma that caused the maar explosion was also basalt.[1]

Kilbourne Hole is a maar volcanic crater, located 30 miles (48 km) west of the Franklin Mountains of El Paso, Texas, in the Potrillo volcanic field of Doña Ana County, New Mexico. Another maar, Hunt's Hole, lies just two miles (3.2 km) south. Kilbourne Hole is notable for the large number of mantle xenoliths (solid fragments of mantle rock) that were carried to the surface by the eruption.

Estimates of the age of the crater vary from about 24,000 to about 80,000 years.[2][1][3]

In 1975, Kilbourne Hole was designated as a National Natural Landmark by the National Park Service.[4] It is now part of Organ Mountains–Desert Peaks National Monument.

  1. ^ a b Wood, Charles A.; Kienle, Jürgen, eds. (1990). Volcanoes of North America: United States and Canada. Cambridge University Press. pp. 310–311. ISBN 0-521-36469-8.
  2. ^ Cordell, L. (1975). "Combined Geophysical Studies at Kilbourne Hole Maar". New Mexico Geological Society Guidebook: 26th Field Conference. University of New Mexico Press: 273–281.
  3. ^ Leland H. Gile (1987). "A Pedogenic Chronology for Kilbourne Hole, Southern New Mexico: II. Time of the Explosions and Soil Events Before the Explosions". Soil Science Society of America Journal. 51 (3): 752–760. doi:10.2136/sssaj1987.03615995005100030033x.
  4. ^ "National Natural Landmarks - National Natural Landmarks (U.S. National Park Service)". www.nps.gov. Retrieved 2019-03-25. Year designated: 1975