Maitland Volcano

Maitland Volcano is a heavily eroded shield volcano that resides in the Northern Interior of British Columbia, Canada. It is located 83 km (52 mi) southeast of the small community of Telegraph Creek in what is now the Klappan Range of the northern Skeena Mountains. This multi-vent volcano covered a remarkably large area and was topped by a younger volcanic edifice. Little remains of Maitland Volcano today, limited only to eroded lava flows and distinctive upstanding landforms created when magma hardened within the vents of the volcano.

The shield is associated with an extensive group of related volcanoes called the Northern Cordilleran Volcanic Province (NCVP). This forms part of the much larger Ring of Fire, which surrounds most of the Pacific Ocean basin. Geologic studies have shown that Maitland was a comparatively short-lived volcano. It had volcanic activity for less than a million years, a time span unique from other massive NCVP shields. The volcano is known to have produced at least four types of lava, namely alkali basalt, hawaiite, trachyte and trachybasalt. These have been studied by scientists since the 1950s.