Volcanic activity in the field commenced 1.2 million years ago and was controlled by a number of faults which cross the valley.

Activity continued into the Pleistocene with the youngest eruption generating cones and several lava flows about 17,000 years ago.

A major road and the Los Angeles Aqueduct would be threatened if volcanic activity restarted at Big Pine.

[18] The magmas erupted in the Big Pine volcanic field were generated by melting of lithospheric mantle that had been modified by subduction processes 1.8 billion years ago.

[20][18] Research conducted in 2008 suggested that the mixing and melting of two origin magmas is necessary to generate the observed rock compositions.

[23] Vegetation in the valley is dominated by species adapted to arid and semiarid climates and includes Alkali sacaton, big sagebrush, greasewood, Nevada saltbush, rubber rabbitbrush, salt grass and shadscale.

[23] Volcanism at Big Pine occurred during the Quaternary[24] and yielded a total volume of 0.5 cubic kilometres (0.12 cu mi) of rock.

[25] The oldest volcanic structures, 1.2 million years old, are found in the Oak Creek area and only erosional remnants of them are encountered.

[29] This episode may have generated as much as 0.6 cubic kilometres (0.14 cu mi) of tephra, and lava flows interacted with water forming palagonite.

Route 395 may be impacted by future eruptions at Big Pine;[12] the former contributes 250,000,000–620,000,000 cubic metres (200,000–500,000 acre⋅ft) of the water supply of Los Angeles (from less than one quarter to more than half of the city's water consumption)[31] while the latter is frequently used by people travelling between Mammoth Lakes and Los Angeles.