Hotspot Sites in the National Park System

The landscapes of National Park System sites along hotspot tracks differ depending on if the plate riding over the hotspot is capped by thin oceanic or thick continental crust. Oceanic Hotspots: Sites in Hawaii and American Samoa lie along chains of volcanic islands that get progressively older away from hotspots. Continental Hotspot: Yellowstone National Park contains the youngest of a chain of explosive super volcanoes that stretch across the Snake River Plain of Idaho to the Columbia Plateau in Oregon and Washington, where the Yellowstone Hotspot surfaced 17 million years ago.