Lakes noted the highly explosive character of the volcanic deposits of the Dotsero Crater and proposed that it erupted "...within the human period."

Much later in 1933, R. E. Landon attempted to establish the age of the Dotsero Crater 's volcanics by studying their relation to the topography of the area, including local terraces of the Eagle River.

[8] E. E. Larson[9] and others in 1975 and P. T. Leat[10] and others in 1989 briefly discussed the role of Dotsero Crater as part of regional volcanism in northwest Colorado in terms of both volcano-tectonism and geochemistry.

Both papers provide only a very limited descriptions of the primary volcanic deposits at Dotsero Crater, some of which have since been altered or destroyed by either erosion, quarrying, or a combination of both.

They recognized that this crater is a maar and proposed that the eruption began with construction of scoria cones and lava flow, followed by maar-forming activity.

Its northern and southern crater rims are covered by variably welded agglomerate which extend southward into the ravines tributary to the Eagle River Valley.

[2][12] The maar is excavated into Pennsylvanian sedimentary strata composed of reddish, arkosic sandstones, siltstones, mudrocks, evaporites, minor conglomerates, and rare limestones.

[2][12] From the Dotsero Crater, small lahars and basaltic lava flows extend down two narrow valleys to the floodplain of the Eagle River.

[12] The Dotsero maar and scoria cone complex is interpreted to have been formed by a single eruption which occurred in three phases of activity around 2220 BC ± 300.

[7] This eruption began with magmatic lava fountaining along a NE-SW trending fissure system that is aligned with the major axis of the Dotsero Crater.

The distribution of moderately to densely welded agglomerate suggests multiple vents were active along the NE-SW trending fissure system.