The geothermal areas in Lassen Volcanic National Park include several groups of

hot spring A hot spring, hydrothermal spring, or geothermal spring is a spring produced by the emergence of geothermally heated groundwater onto the surface of the Earth. The groundwater is heated either by shallow bodies of magma (molten rock) or by circ ...

s and

fumarole A fumarole (or fumerole) is a vent in the surface of the Earth or other rocky planet from which hot volcanic gases and vapors are emitted, without any accompanying liquids or solids. Fumaroles are characteristic of the late stages of volcani ...

s, as remnants of former volcanic activity, exist in

Lassen Volcanic National Park Lassen Volcanic National Park is an American national park in northeastern California. The dominant feature of the park is Lassen Peak, the largest lava dome, plug dome volcano in the world and the southernmost volcano in the Cascade Range. L ...

in northeastern

California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...

. Most of these lie in or are closely adjacent to

Mount Tehama Mount Tehama (also called Brokeoff Volcano or Brokeoff Mountain) is an eroded andesitic stratovolcano in the Cascade Volcanic Arc and the Cascade Range in Northern California. Part of the Lassen volcanic area, its tallest remnant, Brokeoff M ...

's caldera. ''Bumpass Hell'' is the most spectacular of these, but others of importance are ''Sulphur Works'', ''Little Hot Springs Valley'', ''Boiling Springs Lake'' and ''Devil's Kitchen''. In each thermal area, the highest temperature of water generally is close to the boiling temperature at the altitude of the particular spring or fumarole — at Bumpass Hell and on the northwest flanks of Lassen Peak.NPS: Lassen Volcanic National Park, Nature & science, Volcanoes / Lava Flows Temperatures as high as have been recorded in the park. Spring activity varies with water supply. Abundant water results in clear springs during early summer, but as the season progresses and the water supply decreases, springs change successively to turbid, warm pools, spattering

mudpot A mudpot, or mud pool, is a sort of acidic hot spring, or fumarole, with limited water. It usually takes the form of a pool of bubbling mud. The acid and microorganisms decompose surrounding rock into clay and mud. Description The mud of a mudp ...

s, and finally steaming fumaroles. There are no true

geyser A geyser (, ) is a spring characterized by an intermittent discharge of water ejected turbulently and accompanied by steam. As a fairly rare phenomenon, the formation of geysers is due to particular hydrogeological conditions that exist only in ...

s within Lassen Volcanic National Park. Gases from hot springs are composed mostly of

steam Steam is a substance containing water in the gas phase, and sometimes also an aerosol of liquid water droplets, or air. This may occur due to evaporation or due to boiling, where heat is applied until water reaches the enthalpy of vaporization ...

and

carbon dioxide Carbon dioxide (chemical formula ) is a chemical compound made up of molecules that each have one carbon atom covalently double bonded to two oxygen atoms. It is found in the gas state at room temperature. In the air, carbon dioxide is transpar ...

, with minor amounts of other gases. These react with the rocks around the springs to ultimately form

opal Opal is a hydrated amorphous form of silica (SiO2·''n''H2O); its water content may range from 3 to 21% by weight, but is usually between 6 and 10%. Due to its amorphous property, it is classified as a mineraloid, unlike crystalline forms ...

if temperature and

acid In computer science, ACID ( atomicity, consistency, isolation, durability) is a set of properties of database transactions intended to guarantee data validity despite errors, power failures, and other mishaps. In the context of databases, a sequ ...

ity are high, or

kaolin Kaolinite ( ) is a clay mineral, with the chemical composition Al2 Si2 O5( OH)4. It is an important industrial mineral. It is a layered silicate mineral, with one tetrahedral sheet of silica () linked through oxygen atoms to one octahedral ...

if they are low. Deposits of

sulfur Sulfur (or sulphur in British English) is a chemical element with the symbol S and atomic number 16. It is abundant, multivalent and nonmetallic. Under normal conditions, sulfur atoms form cyclic octatomic molecules with a chemical formula ...

pyrite The mineral pyrite (), or iron pyrite, also known as fool's gold, is an iron sulfide with the chemical formula Iron, FeSulfur, S2 (iron (II) disulfide). Pyrite is the most abundant sulfide mineral. Pyrite's metallic Luster (mineralogy), lust ...

quartz Quartz is a hard, crystalline mineral composed of silica (silicon dioxide). The atoms are linked in a continuous framework of SiO4 silicon-oxygen tetrahedra, with each oxygen being shared between two tetrahedra, giving an overall chemical form ...

and other substances are also found around the springs and in their runoff channels. Solfataric alteration within the caldera of Mount Tehama covers about five square miles, much more extensive than the present hot springs basins. indicative of its former extent and suggestive of its waning activity. It is the altered materials in the caldera that yielded most readily to the forces of

erosion Erosion is the action of surface processes (such as water flow or wind) that removes soil, rock, or dissolved material from one location on the Earth's crust, and then transports it to another location where it is deposited. Erosion is distin ...

. Diamond Peak is a body of unaltered rock that still remains, because it is more resistant.

Sulphur Works and Little Hot Springs Valley

As in many hydrothermally active areas, the rocks at Sulphur Works and Little Hot Springs Valley in Lassen Volcanic National Park have been chemically altered into bright-colored

clay Clay is a type of fine-grained natural soil material containing clay minerals (hydrous aluminium phyllosilicates, e.g. kaolin, Al2 Si2 O5( OH)4). Clays develop plasticity when wet, due to a molecular film of water surrounding the clay par ...

Sulfurous acid Sulfurous acid (also sulfuric(IV) acid, sulphurous acid (UK), sulphuric(IV) acid (UK)) is the chemical compound with the formula . There is no evidence that sulfurous acid exists in solution, but the molecule has been detected in the gas phase. ...

and

sulfuric acid Sulfuric acid (American spelling and the preferred IUPAC name) or sulphuric acid ( Commonwealth spelling), known in antiquity as oil of vitriol, is a mineral acid composed of the elements sulfur, oxygen and hydrogen, with the molecular formu ...

have broken down hard, gray-green

andesite Andesite () is a volcanic rock of intermediate composition. In a general sense, it is the intermediate type between silica-poor basalt and silica-rich rhyolite. It is fine-grained (aphanitic) to porphyritic in texture, and is composed predomi ...

lavas into red, yellow and buff clays and

iron oxide Iron oxides are chemical compounds composed of iron and oxygen. Several iron oxides are recognized. All are black magnetic solids. Often they are non-stoichiometric. Oxyhydroxides are a related class of compounds, perhaps the best known of whic ...

s. Many visitors pass through Sulphur Works on their way north on State Route 89 and sense the rotten-egg smell (

hydrogen sulfide Hydrogen sulfide is a chemical compound with the formula . It is a colorless chalcogen-hydride gas, and is poisonous, corrosive, and flammable, with trace amounts in ambient atmosphere having a characteristic foul odor of rotten eggs. The unde ...

) when they pass by a hot vent to the east of the road. Sulphur Works is said to be the volcanic center of the ancestral Mount Tehama.

Bumpass Hell

Near Little Hot Springs Valley is Bumpass Hell, a hydrothermally altered geothermal area that spans 16 acres (6.5 ha) and has hot springs, fumaroles, and boiling mudpots. As part of Mount Tehama's main vent, Bumpass Hell is the result of fissures that tap the volcanic heat, thought to be a cooling mass of andesite, perhaps three miles (5 km) below the surface. It is named after Kendall Vanhook Bumpass, a

cowboy A cowboy is an animal herder who tends cattle on ranches in North America, traditionally on horseback, and often performs a multitude of other ranch-related tasks. The historic American cowboy of the late 19th century arose from the '' vaquer ...

and early settler who worked in the

Lassen Peak Lassen Peak ( ), commonly referred to as Mount Lassen, is a lava dome volcano and the southernmost active volcano in the Cascade Range of the Western United States. Located in the Shasta Cascade region of Northern California, it is part of the ...

area in the 1860s. Bumpass discovered the geothermal feature and was named on a mining claim for the area. In 1865 the editor of the ''Red Bluff Independent'' newspaper took a trip with Bumpass to see the locale. During this trip Bumpass broke through a thin crust above a scalding hot mudpot; his leg was badly scalded and eventually had to be

amputated Amputation is the removal of a limb by trauma, medical illness, or surgery. As a surgical measure, it is used to control pain or a disease process in the affected limb, such as malignancy or gangrene. In some cases, it is carried out on indivi ...

.Entry for "Bumpass, Kendall VanHook" at RootsWeb.com
/ref> The area was named in his honor.

Devils Kitchen

About southeast of Lassen Peak is Devils Kitchen. In this geothermal area the hot springs are so

ic that they have eaten pits and holes in the

bedrock In geology, bedrock is solid Rock (geology), rock that lies under loose material (regolith) within the crust (geology), crust of Earth or another terrestrial planet. Definition Bedrock is the solid rock that underlies looser surface mater ...

Terminal Geyser

Located in the southeast corner of the park, Terminal Geyser is not actually a geyser, but rather a cold stream flowing over a steam vent. This is about 100 feet (30 m) from the site of a geothermal boring operation that took place in 1962 and 1978. The 4,008-foot (1,222 m) well is now plugged and abandoned.

Boiling Springs Lake

Just northwest of Terminal Geyser, large, warm-water Boiling Springs Lake has many hot springs, mudpots, and fumaroles along its west shore. Unlike the more heavily visited areas of the park, this area is not developed with

boardwalk A boardwalk (alternatively board walk, boarded path, or promenade) is an elevated footpath, walkway, or causeway built with wooden planks that enables pedestrians to cross wet, fragile, or marshy land. They are also in effect a low type of bridge ...

s or signs and offers a chance to view thermal features in a more natural setting. In 2012, scientists studying the

virus A virus is a submicroscopic infectious agent that replicates only inside the living cells of an organism. Viruses infect all life forms, from animals and plants to microorganisms, including bacteria and archaea. Since Dmitri Ivanovsky's 1 ...

es in Boiling Springs Lake found the first known case of a natural hybrid or "

chimera Chimera, Chimaera, or Chimaira (Greek for " she-goat") originally referred to: * Chimera (mythology), a fire-breathing monster of Ancient Lycia said to combine parts from multiple animals * Mount Chimaera, a fire-spewing region of Lycia or Cilicia ...

" virus, apparently made of two very different groups of viruses that recombined into a single

organism In biology, an organism () is any living system that functions as an individual entity. All organisms are composed of cells (cell theory). Organisms are classified by taxonomy into groups such as multicellular animals, plants, and ...

.Diemer, Geoffrey S.; Stedman, Kenneth M. (11 June 2013).
"A novel virus genome discovered in an extreme environment suggests recombination between unrelated groups of RNA and DNA viruses".
''

Biology Direct ''Biology Direct'' is an online open access scientific journal that publishes original, peer-reviewed research papers, reviews, hypotheses, comments and discovery notes in biology. The journal is published by BioMed Central. The journal follows a ...

''. Retrieved 29 March 2020. They named this "mythological beast of a virus" the " Boiling Springs Lake RNA−DNA Hybrid Virus" or "BSL−RDHV".Thompson, Helen (20 April 2012)
"Hot spring yields hybrid genome: Researchers discover natural chimaeric DNA-RNA virus".
''Nature''. Retrieved 27 March 2020. The study showed there is still much to learn about how viruses can evolve.BioMed Central Limited (18 April 2012)

''ScienceDaily''. Retrieved March 31, 2020. Other types of viral hybrids have since been found elsewhere, and are called the CHIV group (" chimeric viruses"). Koonin, Eugene V.; Dolja, Valerian V.; and Krupovic, Mart. (May 2015
"Origins and evolution of viruses of eukaryotes: The ultimate modularity".
''Virology''. p. 26. Retrieved March 31, 2020.

References

Kendall Van Hook Bumpass
*''Geology of National Parks: Fifth Edition'', Ann G. Harris, Esther Tuttle, Sherwood D., Tuttle (Iowa, Kendall/Hunt Publishing; 1997)

(adapted public domain text; accessed 22 September 2006)
Volcano Hazards of the Lassen Volcanic National Park Area, California
U.S. Geological Survey Fact Sheet 022-00, Online version 1.0 (adapted public domain text; accessed 25 September 2006)

External links

* *
“Hot Water” in Lassen Volcanic National Park— Fumaroles, Steaming Ground, and Boiling Mudpots
USGS fact sheet on Lassen Volcanic National Park
NPS page about the plugging of the well at Terminal Geyser
{{coord, 40.4581, -121.5018, region:US_type:landmark, display=title Lassen Volcanic National Park Hot springs of California Volcanism of California Bodies of water of Shasta County, California Natural history of Shasta County, California