Sacred Ground

Sáttítla Highlands National Monument Honors Indigenous Roots and Volcanic Wonders…

On January 14, 2025, the Sáttítla Highlands National Monument was established. Located 30 miles northeast of Mount Shasta and abutting the Lava Beds National Monument, Sáttítla encompasses 200,000-plus acres of the remote and spectacular Medicine Lake Highlands. “When you drive up there, the stark variety of landscapes is eye-catching. You turn a corner, and you go from dense forest to jet-black lava flows with no vegetation. It’s really kind of a Martian landscape. In fact, the area was once used to prepare astronauts for the moon landing,” explains Nick Joslin, a geologist and the Policy and Advocacy Director at the Mount Shasta Bioregional Ecology Center. According to Joslin, there’s no shortage of incredible geographic features to behold. “Besides Medicine Lake and Little Medicine Lake, there’s Big Glass Mountain and Little Glass Mountain. There are ice caves, lava tubes, lava flows, craters and obsidian flows.”

The Medicine Lake Highlands owes its unique geology to a massive shield volcano. “Medicine Lake Volcano is the largest volcano in the Cascade Mountain chain. Despite the fact that it’s only 8,000 feet tall, it has erupted more volume of lava than any of the other volcanoes. It’s low and broad-shaped, and the lava was fluid enough to run out from the eruption sites farther than the taller peaks like Mt. Shasta. It’s hard to appreciate how big it is because it doesn’t stick up very far. But, from an aerial perspective, you can see that it looks like a giant upside-down shield on the ground,” Joslin says.

The volcano’s activity has also formed one of California’s most important hydrological recharge and storage areas for water supply, by forming aquifers below the surface that capture more than 1.2 million acre-feet of snowmelt annually. “It’s a very fragile and complex system that actually stores more pure water resources than California’s 200 largest surface reservoirs combined, and does it even in drought years. Pristine, cold water is fed into the Fall River Springs, which is the largest spring-fed river system in all of California. It then flows from Shasta Lake all the way to the San Francisco Bay Area. These waters support millions of people, wildlife, world-renowned fisheries and California’s ag industry,” explains Brandy McDaniels, the Sáttítla Highlands National Monument Lead for the Pit River Nation.

The Monument was created under the Antiquities Act in an effort to not only protect its unique natural features, but its archeological and historic significance as well. For 10,000 years, this area has been a central place for the spiritual practice of the Ahjumawi (Pit River) and Modoc people, among others. “Sáttítla is the traditional name of the land, and it means ‘obsidian place’ in reference to the geological features of the area. It’s very important to our people because it’s literally the home of our creation narrative. It’s also a sacred and continuously used place for ceremony and solitude. The high quality of silence is unlike any other place,” says McDaniels.

She also describes the challenges of preserving it. “We’ve been in litigation for nearly 30 years trying to protect it from various ongoing threats to industrialize and pollute this area. But it’s not a partisan issue. We all need food, water, medicine. And, we need these kinds of places and biodiversity to live on this earth. You can’t industrialize every single foot of the world and expect that we’ll survive.”

With the creation of the Monument, the hope is that everyone, including future generations, can enjoy its unspoiled nature. “For recreation, the place is amazing because you not only have an area that’s so remote, but the light pollution is extremely low. There’s amazing dark sky viewing. There’s no cell phone reception, no noise. It’s just an amazing place to escape. And that’s something we’re hoping to protect. In terms of actual use, most people won’t see much change in what’s allowed there. There’s still camping, hunting, fishing, horseback riding, snowmobiling, off-highway vehicles, boating and dogs allowed. Likewise, none of the eventual resource management planning will affect private property owners or any other holdings within the boundary of the Monument,” says Joslin.

But as one of the least-visited volcanoes in California, Joslin adds that getting there requires intention. “It’s not really on the way to anywhere else, so you have to want to go there. But, once you’re there, it’s also super accessible. You don’t have to hike miles into the wilderness to get incredible views. Some places you can even drive right up to. Camping is amazing. Medicine Lake is beautiful. And then the area sort of just shuts down when the snow falls, where you can’t return until it melts or you’re on a snowmobile. So, it just has this allure of being a place that naturally kind of cuts itself off from the rest of the world, which, to me, is part of the attraction,” Joslin says.

But McDaniels also reminds visitors to treat the landscape with respect. “It’s illegal to remove obsidian or resources in the area. Signs are posted, but sometimes because of the weather, they get knocked down so people don’t always see them. That’s been the case since even before the Monument. So, that’s the message we want to put out. This is a very important place that needs to be protected and preserved.” •

Sáttítla Highlands National Monument
www.protectsattitla.org
Additional information can be found through the
U.S. Forest Service