Sunset Crater Volcano National Monument celebrated its listing in the National Register of Historic Places on Saturday. KNAU’s Melissa Sevigny reports, the designation recognizes Sunset Crater’s vital role in the Apollo missions to the moon.
Apollo astronauts tested equipment and drove the moon buggy over the spiky lava fields of Sunset Crater and adjacent National Forest lands, and they got a crash course in how to do geology.
Local historian Ben Carver spent several years documenting the exact locations of Apollo activities in support of the application for a new “historic district.”
"The simulated moon walks they conducted in the district, the techniques, the training they performed here, they practiced, they applied on the moon just weeks later—just a month later in the case of Apollo 17," Carver says. "So that’s really exciting, right?"
Ian Hough of the National Park Service says the recognition has been a long time coming. "It probably never left people’s minds, even in the early 70s," he says. "It’s always been on people’s minds that the places that are part of this history should be preserved and accessible to the public."
Visitors to Sunset Crater Volcano National Monument can now see a plaque honoring the designation at the Bonito Vista Trail and new interpretive signs about the region’s ties to the Apollo Program.
