Peak is baby of Cascade Range

By Peggy Andersen
The Associated Press

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Like the others, Mount St. Helens has erupted, blasted itself apart and reformed several times over tens of thousands of years.

The perfect cone that blew apart in May 1980 began to form during the 500-year Pine Creek eruptive period that began in 1000 B.C. The current mountain is about 2,500 years old — the blink of an eye in geological time, but a period that roughly covers the history of Western civilization.

The pyramids in Egypt were already 2,000 years old when the current peak began to form. Greece and Rome rose and fell as it grew.

The major religions developed as the cone rose above the forested mountains: Buddhism in 500 B.C., Christianity as the millennial clock turned from B.C. to A.D., Islam 600 years later.

The nations of Europe formed, dissolved and redesigned themselves as the centuries rolled.

On this side of the Atlantic, the Aztecs were building pyramids in 1200, the Mayans about 500 years later. European explorers ventured to the New World in the late 1400s, followed by colonists and settlers.

The Klickitat and Cowlitz tribes, who had already inhabited the area for centuries, called the peak "mountain of fire" in their languages.

In 1792, British explorer George Vancouver named the mountain for a countryman, diplomat Baron St. Helens.

In 1836, Meredith Gairdner of Fort Vancouver logged the first written eyewitness report of an eruption.

In 1980, it again erupted, reducing its height by 1,300 feet. Debris was spread as much as 17 miles northwest of the crater. The blast destroyed more than 200 square miles of forest, covered the river valley to the west with an average 150 feet of debris and killed 57 people, about 7,000 big-game animals and countless smaller creatures.

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company

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