Chiricahua redesignated as a national park in October 2026
1 min readNASA’s announcement, published Wednesday 28 October 2026, said the area was redesignated as Chiricahua National Park in October 2026. The land had been designated a national monument in 1924. It covers part of the Chiricahua Apache Nation’s traditional lands in southeastern Arizona.
Some 27 million years ago, a volcano in southeastern Arizona erupted and spread more than 1,000 times as much volcanic material across the area as Mount St. Helens did in 1980. Ash and pumice blanketed the region. Massive pyroclastic flows hardened into deposits of welded rhyolitic tuff that were nearly 1,600 feet (500 meters) thick in some areas.
As the magma chamber emptied, the ground above it collapsed and formed the Turkey Creek caldera. The depression was roughly 12 miles (19 kilometers) wide and 4,900 feet (1,500 meters) deep. Erosion and weathering gradually shaped the welded tuff into spires, hoodoos and canyons.
The Apache named the area the Land of the Standing-Up Rocks. Visitors encounter rock pinnacles in Rhyolite Canyon and Bonita Canyon. Some spires stand hundreds of feet tall. Big Balanced Rock has large boulders perched on top, while formations at Heart of Rocks and Massai Point occur in groups of hundreds.
Four biogeographic regions converge in the park. They include the Sonoran Desert, Chihuahuan Desert, Rocky Mountains and Sierra Madre. Among the 1,000 species in the park’s desert, grassland, chaparral, deciduous forest and coniferous forest ecosystems are agaves, prickly pear cacti, yuccas, manzanita, pine, fir, cypress, sycamore, juniper and oak.
The OLI (Operational Land Imager) on Landsat 9 captured a cloud-free image of the national park on July 2, 2026. NASA said the eroding rhyolitic tuff appears gray in the image. Stream valleys with trees and other vegetation cross the area. According to the National Park Service, the range’s highest point outside the park rises 2,986 meters (9,795 feet) above sea level and more than 1,800 meters above the surrounding valley.
