Crater Lake was formed 7,700 years ago after Mount Mazama,a composite volcano collapsed in an explosion bigger than Mt. St Helen's.This picture shows Mount Mazama during it's explosion
This picture shows Mount Mazama collapsing down creating a caldera.
This picture shows the steam coming off of the newly formed caldera. The new caldera is 6 miles long.
It took about 250 years for the caldera to be filled by rain water and melted snow creating Crater lake as we see it today.
This second picture shows Crater Lake from above. The black line is the roads going around the lake and the red line shows the calderas edge. Inside the lake is Wizard island, can you see it on the left side of the lake? Wizard island is a cinder cone, it was formed from several eruptions over thousands of years.
Now that we read about how it formed, Let's watch it in action!
