This is Mt. Lassen (Lassen Peak), a prominent volcano and the key scenery in Lassen Volcanic National Park. Lassen Volcano is part of the Cascade Range, a north-south linear chain of active and potentially active volcanoes in America's Pacific Northwest. It extends from northern California to Oregon, Washington State, and into British Columbia, Canada. The Cascade Range formed as a result of tectonic subduction - the offshore Juan de Fuca Plate is diving below the North American Plate. The diving plate causes melting in the mantle. The melt rises and emerges at the surface at volcanic centers. Famous Cascade Range volcanoes include Mt. St. Helens, which had a large eruption in May 1980, Mt. Rainier near Seattle, Mt. Hood, which is the highest peak in Oregon, and Mt. Mazama, which destroyed itself 7,700 years ago in an enormous eruption that produced the modern-day Crater Lake Caldera (also a national park).

Mt. Lassen is a large volcanic dome that developed by lava extruding along the northeastern flanks of a former Cascade Range feature called Brokeoff Volcano (also known as Tehama Volcano). Brokeoff Volcano is an andesitic-dacitic subduction zone stratovolcano (composite volcano). Stratovolcanoes usually have violent, explosive ash eruptions. They tend to erupt igneous materials of intermediate chemistry (between felsic and mafic). Brokeoff Volcano was active from about 4 million years ago, during the Pliocene, to about 400,000 years ago. Only the caldera exists today. Calderas are large holes or depressions left behind after a volcano destroys itself or collapses. The Brokeoff Caldera is an erosional and slow-collapse caldera that formed before about 350,000 years ago.

The Mt. Lassen volcanic dome first started forming in the Late Pleistocene, at about 29 ka. It is principally composed of dacite lava, an extrusive igneous rock that is usually porphyritic-textured. Dacite is between andesite and rhyolite in silica content. Activity through time has ranged from dacite lava extrusion to explosive ash eruptions. Mt. Lassen last experienced eruptive activity in the early 1900s (1914 to 1921).