I came to Lava Beds expecting . . . . well . . . . lava. But what I found nearly blew what’s left of my little mind. Lava Beds National Monument in north-central California near a tiny town called Tule Lake (or Tulelake, it seems to be spelled both ways interchangeably) contains lava all right, and a whole lot more.

Its stories are as varied as were the people who lived, explored, settled, fought, survived the Great Depression in a CCC work camp, who were imprisoned here, homesteaded, and those who came as visitors like me. Stories of all these people nearly overshadow the geology for which the place was originally set aside as a national monument in 1925.

So complex and intertwined are all its stories I simply won’t be able to do justice to all of them. Thus, I won’t even try.

All I can say with certainty is this: If ever you are anywhere near this place, you need to bust your buns to come visit for yourself.

A Small Place with Lots to Do

I pulled in to Lava Beds a little after noon on Labor Day Monday and found roads and parking lots and campground close to empty. Now this, I thought, is my kind of park. Especially since I’d just come down from the crowded roads of Crater Lake and that park’s traditionally busiest weekend. The only problem, I discovered, was that I’d also arrived at the very moment when most interpretive activities come to a screeching end. But it didn’t take long for me to realize that ya don’t need a human in a flat hat to tell the stories of this place. There are interpretive panels everywhere and some excellent self-guiding booklets.

First things first, though. So it was to the campground to set up my little portable motel. The campground itself is one of the park’s prime historic features. Lava Beds, it turns out, is one of our older national monuments. The monument was established in 1925 and a few years later was the site of a Civilian Conservation Corps camp. The CCC built the campground and I’ll bet it’s one of very few campgrounds in the world that is a national historic site. Its original picnic tables were built by CCC boys using lava boulders and massive timbers split in half to form seats and table tops. (The CCC never ever did anything on a small scale.)

At Lava Beds NM, the CCC crews built picnic tables to last/Lee Dalton

The visitor center appears to be quite new. It’s not very large, but what really struck me about it is how much the exhibit room feels like someone’s living room. Around one side are some displays and at the other end are a couple of soft comfortable chairs and a sofa facing what looks like a fireplace. The fireplace contains a flat screen TV upon which the park’s introductory video is played. It’s not hard to feel at home there.

I noticed right away that the orientation video didn’t have the polish and fancies of most you might see. That made me curious, so I stuck around to watch credits roll when it was finished. Sure enough, it’s sort of home made. It was produced by a teacher at Tule Lake High School and a crew of students. The narrator was a girl from the school. What a fine example of a park working with the young people of its community! It was yet another example of how small park units sometimes have to use their wits to find ways to get the job done when they can’t compete with bigger brothers and sisters for parts of the budget pie.

One of the biggest draws of the monument are its caves. Lava tubes, to be more exact. There are over 800 of them scattered all over the place with a concentration right behind the VC. Only one is lighted, and all are left in mostly primitive states. Visitors are cautioned that entry into a cave means that everyone should be carrying a good light and some extras, just in case. Low ceilings and sharp lava dictate a need for a hard hat of some kind.

There are roughly 800 lava tubes that you can explore at Lava Beds National Monument/Lee Dalton

Now, I don’t know about you, but I don’t usually run around with a big supply of flashlights and haven’t had a hard hat on my head for a bunch of years. Not to worry, though. There are big beefy flashlights you can borrow for free at the visitor center desk. So called “bump hats” may be purchased for just $8 and a bit of change.

And, of course, there’s the mandatory inquisition: Have you been in another cave or mine anywhere within the past ten years? If you have, are you wearing the same boots or carrying any of the same equipment that went into that cave with you? If you do, it might be harboring microscopic spores of Pseudogymnoascus destructans, a deadly fungus behind White Nose Syndrome. It’s a fungus that is spreading and killing bats all around North America.

Be honest, now, for the lives of thousands of little mosquito gobbling bats may hang upon your answer and your willingness to decontaminate yourself and your gear. Fee collectors at the entrance station also ask the Big Questions and if you pass, they hand you a colorful cave entry card that you can place on your’s car’s dashboard while parked near a cave. Don’t forget to display the cave pass, though, or you may have an army of federal agents tracking you down.

If you answered yes to any of the questions, then you’ll be dispatched to a decontamination station just outside the VC’s front doors where you’ll scrub your boots, your pack, and your whatevers that might have gone into that mine or cave.

Now I’m sure there are a few people out there who might think this is some kind of evil government overreach. But I doubt you’d feel that way if you were a bat.

During the main summer season, there are a few ranger-guided cave tours, but most of the time visitors will be on their own. The park has divided caves into three categories: Least Challenging. Moderately Challenging. And Most Challenging. Cave lengths vary considerably from as short as 170 feet up to 6,903 in one named Catacombs. Some caves have mostly high ceilings while others have squeezes that require one to crawl through openings where ceiling height may be only a few inches from the floor.

Mushpot Cave is somewhat easier to navigate thanks to the lighting system/Lee Dalton

Head out the door, drop into a cave entrance and go for it. You’re on your own – and for many of us, that’s what makes it even more fun. Safety is stressed, and the system seems to be working well because only a few visitors have disappeared completely.

I tried only three of them and was alone in all three. Mushpot Cave actually has some lights and is a very easy visit with a paved walkway and even a little amphitheater tucked into it. Indian Springs is a bit more challenging and a tougher go, but still not too much for a semi-creaky old man. Sentinel Cave is a longer cave, but easy to move through. It has two entrances and my only problem was deciding if I wanted to walk uphill or down along the road to get back to my truck when I finished exploring.

I asked how often rangers have to pull someone out of a cave and learned it’s only maybe every two or three years. Most injuries are minor falls or bumpings with a few abrasions. But just in case, the monument’s crew does prepare for possible cave rescues.

Beyond the lava and the caves and the campground, there are a couple of other worlds out there to explore, too. A good place to start is with a hike up the trail on Schonchin Butte. (That’s pronounced SKON-chin and the story of its namesake is another of the fascinating tidbits here. If you all promise to be good girls and boys, I’ll tell it a little later.) It’s just three-quarters of a mile with a 700-foot climb on a good trail to a fire lookout built by the CCC. I climbed it early in the morning and had the entire mountain to myself until I was almost all the way back down where I met a delightful couple from Michigan.

My morning on Schonchin Butte started with a blanket of heavy smoke from fires southwest of here. But by the time I reached the lookout, wind had begun clearing it away and I was treated to my first look at Mt. Shasta off to the south and west. Spread below was a patchwork of grassy plains and dark, jagged lava flows. About 70 percent of the monument’s 46,000 acres is designated wilderness. That’s a whopping 28,460 acres. It is possible to explore the wilderness on foot, but the fact that there’s no surface water anyplace makes that especially challenging.

Just to the west is the blue of Tule Lake. I found it amusing when I learned that the original Tule Lake had been much larger before it was drained to make way for more agricultural land in the 1930's and 40's. Some time later, the smaller lake that sits there now was created to provide water for the lands that once contained water. Then, as now, it was Our Tax Dollars At Work.

The Modoc War And Other Tragedies

It’s an old and all too familiar story from our nation’s history. A tribe of natives living on land coveted by white settlers. In this case, the Modocs. Pushed to a reservation filled with broken promises and unfriendly members of other tribes, they were in a wretched situation. Finally, after years to trying in futility to redress what they felt were wrongs, a band of Modocs under leadership of a warrior the settlers called Captain Jack and some others fled the reservation north of present-day Klamath Falls, Oregon, in the fall of 1872 and tried to return to their real home on the shores of original Tule Lake just north of the current monument.

It wasn’t long before the Army was sent to chase them back to where the settlers thought they belonged. There ensued a long and bloody battle that came to be known as the Modoc War. Captain Jack and his small band of outnumbered warriors, women, children and old people holed up in a lava outcropping in the north end of what would someday become Lava Beds monument. Inept Army commanders who were stuck in tactics left over from the Civil War were completely unprepared to deal with what were essentially guerrilla tactics of the wily Indians. Thus, through a brutally cold winter, approximately 60 Modoc warriors were able to stymie a force of nearly 1,000 U.S. troops until June of the following year. Casualty lists are striking. About 15 Modocs died of sickness, cold, or old age. None died from enemy action. The Army and settler count was about 55, with most of those due to Modoc bullets.

Captain Jack's Stronghold cave a small band of Modoc Indians the upper hand over hundreds of Army troops/Lee Dalton

Today, you may walk through the jumbled lava at Captain Jack’s Stronghold that made such an effective fortification for Captain Jack and his people. An excellent self-guiding booklet tells tales of this place. In another location, you can hike an easy trail for a mile to another strongpoint where a few Modocs ambushed a troop of artillery men and killed many of them. They could have killed all, but the Modocs were not bloodthirsty. Scarfaced Charley, the Modoc leading the ambush, called to the survivors, “You boys that ain’t dead had better go home. We don’t want to kill you all in one day,” and allowed the living to gather the wounded and retreat.

Not far to the north is a large white wooden cross. Canby’s Cross was erected some time after the battle to commemorate the “murder” of Brigadier General E.R.S. Canby. That was a “crime” for which Captain Jack and three other Modoc leaders were later hanged at Fort Klamath. Others in the tribe were then exiled to Oklahoma.

And that brings us to my promise: Captain Jack’s second in command was a man named Schonchin John, who was hanged along with Captain Jack. Schonchin John’s son, Peter Schonchin, had actually been one of the warriors fighting in the war. After he returned from the Oklahoma exile some years later, he became a friend of a man named J. D. Sutton, who was leading efforts to establish Lava Beds National Monument. Peter Schonchin worked alongside J. D. and in so doing, tried to make sure that the Modoc story would be included in tales the monument would have to tell. It is in his honor that Schonchin Butte is named. He died in 1935 at the age of about 95.

But the Modoc War is only one story of tragedy told here. There’s also the tale of Japanese internment during World War II. The U.S. government, needing a place to house thousands of Japanese who had been “relocated” from the West Coast and other sensitive parts of the country, were sent to a former CCC camp not far east of the present monument. It became a “sequestration” camp for Japanese from other camps who were deemed “disloyal” to America for any of a number of reasons. Today, it is part of a group of historic sites named Valor in the Pacific.

There are more stories here. Too many more. But some fascinating reading about the Modoc War can be found here.  A biography of Peter Schonchin is here. 

Hope For The Future

Around noon on my second day, the stillness at Lava Beds campground was broken by a chorus of young voices. A caravan of cars had pulled in and disgorged a herd of kids who looked to be about 12 years old. My first reaction was something like, "Oh, crud. There goes the neighborhood."

That lasted only a few moments before I realized that these kids were something special. Watching them efficiently set up camp and get quietly organized was something to behold. Within a few minutes, one of the adults was hollering for them all to come get lunch. Just a few minutes later, their camp was set up in an area encompassing about ten campsites in the middle of B Loop. Not long after that, they gathered their caving gear, climbed back in the cars and trooped off to explore some lava tubes.

So it was that when they returned later I couldn’t resist walking over and asking about them. Turns out they were 17 seventh-grade students and 12 adults from Pacific Union College’s Elementary Lab School in Angwin, California, in the Napa Valley. I found the leader and asked for what I knew would be a mighty interesting story.

It seems that teacher Dwight Crow has been doing this at the beginning of every school year for about 22 years now. His students (and a flock of their parents) begin the year with an intensive study of geology, earthquakes, and volcanoes and then head out the classroom door to see the real thing. He showed me a 71-page syllabus full of activities that each student must complete. They were on the second day of a four-day expedition. Lava Beds is just one of many stops filled with activities and features that would tickle the fancy of any kid.

I was in awe. How would it be if all of our schools and teachers had the courage and wherewithal to provide this kind of blessing for their students? What a shame that they can’t. But when they can, it’s good to know the NPS is here for them.

And Finally

I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many garbage and recycling cans in any NPS area as I’ve seen here. Maybe that’s one of the reasons the place seems to be so clean and well-maintained. There’s absolutely no excuse for littering when a can is less than 50 feet away. But then, I also met some of the maintenance crew and rangers and of course campground hosts Larry and Joan Johnson and listened as they all shared their pride in Lava Beds. It shows.

I almost passed up visiting Lava Beds. After all, I lived for some years at another volcanic monument called Sunset Crater down in Arizona and I’ve visited Craters of the Moon in Idaho many times. Why go and see more lava? All I can say now is thank goodness I didn’t pass by here. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have been sitting here now typing on my computer in a peaceful campground shaded by juniper trees watching a flock of quail passing by and listening to some good kids learning from a caring teacher and singing around a campfire. And I’d have missed the fascinating and tragic histories the Modocs and Japanese have to tell.

Yep, gentle reader, you really need to visit this place some day. And plan on spending several days when you do. I guarantee you’ll be glad you did.