Top 10 Volcanoes in the United States
The United States sits on more active volcanoes than almost any other country in the world, scattered from the Hawaiian hotspot in the Pacific to the Aleutian arc, the Cascades and the Yellowstone hotspot in the interior. These ten are the names that anyone who works with American geology, or simply lives near one of them, has learned.
1. Kīlauea, Hawaii
The most active volcano on Earth right now, and the cultural and spiritual centre of Hawaiian volcanism. A shield volcano on the southeast side of the Big Island, with frequent eruptions from the summit caldera and the East Rift Zone. Visitors come for live lava.
2. Mauna Loa, Hawaii
The largest active volcano on the planet by volume, and Kīlauea's giant neighbour. Eruptions are rarer but vastly bigger, the last in 2022 sending lava down the northeast flank toward the main saddle highway.
3. Mount St. Helens, Washington
The 1980 eruption is the defining American volcanic event of the modern era — a lateral blast that killed 57 people and decapitated the mountain. The volcano remains active and the surrounding national monument is one of the country's best volcano-tourism destinations.
4. Mount Rainier, Washington
The most heavily glaciated peak in the lower 48 and one of the highest-hazard volcanoes in the country, looming over Tacoma and the southern suburbs of Seattle. The threat is lahars, not lava.
5. Yellowstone, Wyoming
A continental-scale supervolcano whose last caldera-forming eruption 640,000 years ago left a basin 80 kilometres across. The geysers, hot springs and mudpots that draw millions of tourists are surface expressions of the magma chamber below.
6. Mount Hood, Oregon
Portland's iconic stratovolcano. Currently dormant but with a long history of explosive eruptions and the youngest lava domes only a few hundred years old. Among the most accessible volcanoes in the Cascades for climbers.
7. Mount Shasta, California
A massive, isolated stratovolcano in northern California with a complex of overlapping cones. A long climbing tradition and a strong cultural presence in northern California new-age communities. Currently dormant.
8. Mount Redoubt, Alaska
One of the most active Cook Inlet volcanoes, with eruptions that have repeatedly closed Anchorage's airport. Its 1989 eruption nearly downed a passenger jet that flew through the ash cloud — a foundational event for modern aviation-ash protocols.
9. Novarupta, Alaska
The site of the largest volcanic eruption of the 20th century, in 1912, now inside Katmai National Park. The associated Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes is one of the strangest landscapes in North America.
10. Long Valley, California
A young caldera east of Yosemite that has been seismically restless for decades. Mammoth Mountain ski resort sits on its western rim; the floor includes hot springs, fumaroles and frequent earthquake swarms. Active monitoring keeps the basin under continuous watch.
Cascades versus Alaska versus Hawaii
American volcanism has three flavours: the explosive arc volcanoes of the Cascades and Aleutians, the runny basaltic shields of Hawaii, and the rifts and calderas of the western interior. Each has its own visitor culture and its own hazard profile.
Monitoring and the USGS
The US Geological Survey runs five volcano observatories — Hawaiian, Cascades, Alaska, Yellowstone and California — that together monitor more than 160 active volcanoes. Each publishes alert levels and weekly updates online; check before any field visit.
See them on the map
Filter the map to the United States and the volcanic geography of the country becomes immediately legible: a long arc through Alaska and the Cascades, a hotspot trail across Idaho into Yellowstone, and the Hawaiian chain trailing into the Pacific.