Valles Caldera National Preserve

The caldera is 13.7 miles wide — a number that doesn't register until you're standing in it, realizing the entire bowl was once the mouth of a volcano. The Jemez Mountains hold this landscape now: grassland meadows, volcanic domes, significant elk habitat. The National Park Service manages it as a preserve. Humans have occupied this ground for 10,000 years. That's the fact that stays with you — not the geology, impressive as it is, but the continuity.