The NASA Earth Observatory published a Landsat 9 image of Chiricahua, which in October 2026 was redesignated as Chiricahua National Park, according to NASA. The area has been protected as a national monument since 1924.

NASA said the landscape in what is now southeastern Arizona was shaped by a spectacular series of volcanic eruptions about 27 million years ago. The blasts spread more than 1,000 times as much volcanic material as Mount St. Helens did in 1980, blanketing the region—part of the Chiricahua Apache Nation’s traditional lands—with ash and pumice. Massive pyroclastic flows hardened into welded rhyolitic tuff that in some areas reached nearly 1,600 feet (500 meters) thick, about three times the height of the Washington Monument, the article said.

As the magma chamber emptied, the ground above collapsed to form the Turkey Creek caldera, which NASA described as roughly 12 miles (19 kilometers) wide and 4,900 feet (1,500 meters) deep. Erosion and weathering later sculpted the welded tuff into spires, hoodoos, and canyons that define the modern landscape.

The Earth Observatory said the OLI (Operational Land Imager) on Landsat 9 captured the cloud-free image on July 2, 2026. Individual rock spires are too small to distinguish from orbit, but the eroding rhyolitic tuff appears gray, while stream valleys dense with trees and other vegetation, including Rhyolite Canyon and Bonita Canyon, snake across the scene, NASA reported.

The article noted that the Apache called the area “The Land of the Standing-Up Rocks.” Visitors encounter a maze of pinnacles in places such as Rhyolite Canyon and while driving through Bonita Canyon, with some towers rising hundreds of feet. Features include Big Balanced Rock, with a large boulder perched on top, and clusters of hundreds of pinnacles at Heart of Rocks and Massai Point.

With four biogeographic regions converging in the park—the Sonoran Desert, the Chihuahuan Desert, the Rocky Mountains, and the Sierra Madre—the area is a haven of plant diversity, according to NASA. The agency said about 1,000 species grow across desert, grassland, chaparral, deciduous forest, and coniferous forest ecosystems, including agaves, prickly pear cacti, yuccas, manzanita, pine, fir, cypress, sycamore, juniper, and oak.

The park lies within the Chiricahua Mountains, one of Arizona’s “sky islands,” isolated ranges that rise from surrounding desert basins. According to the National Park Service, the range’s highest point (outside the park) reaches 2,986 meters (9,795 feet) above sea level, more than 1,800 meters above the surrounding valley.