Qualla: Mole Hill https://qualla.com/mole-hill-virginia en-us © 2026 Bendyline Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:40:07 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_res/siteimages/rsslogo.png Qualla: Mole Hill https://qualla.com/mole-hill-virginia Mole Hill: Introduction https://qualla.com/mole-hill-virginia/ It does not look like a volcano. Mole Hill rises out of farmland west of Harrisonburg as a perfectly rounded, tree-covered knob - the kind of low hill that prompts no questions in a landscape full of low hills. Drive past it and you might not notice. But beneath the trees is dark basalt, the kind of rock you find at active volcanoes in Hawaii and Iceland, and the geological story it tells is improbable. Mole Hill is the eroded core of a volcano that erupted 47 million years ago in the middle of a continent, far from any tectonic plate boundary that should have produced it. It is one of the youngest volcanoes on the East Coast of North America - and one of the strangest.

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]]> Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/n/z/f/mole-hill-virginia-wp/dnzf-mole-hill-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Mole Hill: A Volcano Where None Should Be https://qualla.com/mole-hill-virginia/ Modern volcanism, by the standard textbook account, happens at plate boundaries - where plates collide, separate, or slide past each other. The Cascade volcanoes of the Pacific Northwest and the volcanic arc of Indonesia are the classic examples. Virginia is nowhere near a plate ...

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]]> Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/n/z/f/mole-hill-virginia-wp/dnzf-mole-hill-a-volcano-where-none-should-be.mp3 0:06 2 full Mole Hill: Decompression and Old Scars https://qualla.com/mole-hill-virginia/ Geologists have spent decades arguing about what caused these eruptions. Mantle plumes - rising hot rock from deep in the Earth - have been proposed and largely rejected. Edge-driven convection has been considered. The current leading explanation is more subtle: a large-scale cha...

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]]> Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/n/z/f/mole-hill-virginia-wp/dnzf-mole-hill-decompression-and-old-scars.mp3 0:06 3 full Mole Hill: What's in the Rock https://qualla.com/mole-hill-virginia/ The basalt at the crest of Mole Hill is technically olivine-spinel basalt - dark gray to nearly black, medium grained, with abundant pale green pyroxene crystals and minor yellow-brown olivine crystals visible to the naked eye in fresh samples. Trace amounts of more evolved magma...

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]]> Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/n/z/f/mole-hill-virginia-wp/dnzf-mole-hill-whats-in-the-rock.mp3 0:06 4 full Mole Hill: A Quiet Landmark https://qualla.com/mole-hill-virginia/ Today Mole Hill is a rounded monadnock - an isolated hill rising above a relatively flat valley floor - covered in deciduous forest, surrounded by Rockingham County farmland. The summit is about 1,893 feet above sea level, several hundred feet above the surrounding land. The hill...

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]]> Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/n/z/f/mole-hill-virginia-wp/dnzf-mole-hill-a-quiet-landmark.mp3 0:06 5 full