Crater Lake National Park covers an area of 249 square miles primarily focused on Crater Lake itself. Crater Lake is not a meteor crater, but rather is a volcanic caldera – a hole made by the collapse of a volcano. Volcanic eruptions built up a 10,000 – 12,0000 foot mountain now called Mt. Mazama until seven thousand seven hundred years ago, when the volcano exploded in a cataclysmic eruption. During this eruption, so much material was evacuated from the internal magma chamber that the remaining mountain collapsed and the caldera that we now see today half filled with water.
