Mole Hill: The Shenandoah Valley’s humble little dormant volcano

I don’t pretend to know much about, you know, geology, among other things, but common sense tells you that we didn’t get these mountains around us here in the Shenandoah Valley without there being something going on beneath the earth’s surface.

I hint at that whenever we write about the occasional minor earthquakes that we get here, in the, like, 2.5 on the Richter scale range.

I can’t imagine how I’d handle writing about a volcano.

No worries there – our volcanoes here, and yes, we have them – are dormant.

One is in Rockingham County, in the Dayton area, and it’s called Mole Hill.

Mole Hill has been the focus of decades of study by the geology folks at JMU, the findings of which I came across after stumbling into knowing about the presence of a dormant volcano roughly 25 minutes from my home office.

I blame YouTube for this.

Whenever I’m stuck inside for my daily cardio workout, I dial up YouTube to have something educational to watch as I’m pedaling on my Peloton, and a video about the Mount St. Helens eruption in 1980 was first in my recommendations for a recent ride.

I was 8 when Mount St. Helens erupted, so it was neat to have the chance to learn more there, as I pushed myself too hard on a fake bike ride.

The next video that came up was one of those “50 things you didn’t know about” ones specific to Virginia, and one of the 50 things was about Mole Hill.

Good news, vis-à-vis Mount St. Helens: Mole Hill, being considered “dormant,” isn’t fixin’ to blow its top like Mount St. Helens did.

The geologists tell us that Mole Hill is 47 million years old, and we can see with our own eyes that it’s not active – you wouldn’t even know it was anything if somebody didn’t tell it was something, Mole Hill being a literal hill that crests only 150 feet higher than its nearby surroundings.

No snow-capped towering peak, like Mount St. Helens – elevation: 8,363 feet above sea level – like Mount Fuji – elevation: 12,388 feet above sea level.

Same is true for another local dormant volcano, Trimble Knob, over in Highland County, which is only 229 feet higher than its surroundings.

Virginia’s highest peak, Mount Rogers, a 750 million-year-old dormant volcano, is 5,729 feet above sea level, and looks and feels like it.

Our volcanoes are little baby volcanoes.

But, beware!

Actually, no need to beware.

Our babies have been put to bed.