Chrome aerial of Kilauea caldera on the Big Island of Hawaii, looking out from the Volcano House hotel across a vast field of hardened lava toward the steaming pit of Halemaumau — the traditional home of Pele, goddess of volcanoes, and one of the most actively watched craters on earth. The Volcano House in the foreground has perched on the caldera rim since the 1840s, one incarnation after another, offering guests the singular experience of watching an active volcano from a hotel veranda. When this card was made in 1972 Halemaumau was in continuous low-level eruption, producing the sulfur steam plume visible here; the scale of the lava field stretching to the horizon gives some sense of what the summit of a shield volcano actually looks like at ground level.

• Caption: "Famous Volcano House Viewpoint Showing the Kilauea Volcano Area and the Actively Smoking Halemaumau Crater in Volcanoes National Park — Island of Hawaii"
• Card no.: DT-89640-C
• Publisher: World Wide Distributors Ltd., Honolulu; made by Dexter Press, West Nyack, NY
• Status: Unposted