There’s A Secret Volcano Hiding Within Austin’s City Limits

Did you know that there are six American cities that have a volcano within their city limits? Hold up, what! And that includes one major city here in Texas, y'all, I'm talking about our capital city.

Here are the American cities with volcanoes in them: Portland, Oregon, Bend, Oregon, Jackson, Mississippi, Honolulu, Hawaii, and Prescott Valley, Arizona. All of those cities just became a lot cooler to me. So, which Texas city makes the list?

Pilot Knob Volcano In Austin, TX, City Limits

The answer is the capital of the Lone Star State, Austin. Did you know this? The volcano is named Pilot Knob, and it's located in southeast Austin, near McKinney Falls State Park. It's not too far from Austin-Bergstrom International Airport (convenient if it starts erupting again).

Pilot Knob is the largest extinct volcano in the state of Texas. It is a low-slung hill with a diameter of over two miles. It's also the only exposed submarine volcano in the state.

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Pilot Knob is extinct (for now), and for those of us who don't recall Volcano: 101 in elementary school, "an extinct volcano is a volcano that scientists believe is unlikely to erupt again because it no longer has a magma supply."

Don't start doomsday planning yet. Pilot Knob has been extinct for a very long time. It was active during the Cretaceous Period, which was about 144 million to 66 million years ago. Local geologists consider it to be a window into history. As far as visiting Pilot Knob goes, you can. It's open 24/7 and is about a 20-minute drive from Austin.

For those keeping score at home, there are around 200 volcanoes in Texas that have been extinct for millions of years. Don't get too comfy, though; extinct volcanoes do have the potential to become active again at some point in the future, according to geologists.