Cascade Range Peaks and their heights,
References to Mount Hood, Mount St. Helens and Mount Rainier activity,
Mount St. Helens, eruptions in 1835 and 1842
(Published in 1889)
Excerpt from:
"Elwood Evans, 1889, History of the Pacific Northwest: Portland, vol.2, p.96-97.
Cascade Range Peaks and their heights,
References to Mount Hood, Mount St. Helens and Mount Rainier activity,
Mount St. Helens, eruptions in 1835 and 1842.
[p.96-97]
...
The Cascade Mountains are extraordinary for their narrowness, being at most points not more than fifty miles wide, as well as for their general uniformity in height, averaging about five thousand feet, and their almost exclusively volcanic character. They are remarkable, too, for the lofty volcanic cones which rise from them at almost regular intervals. These are in order, beginning on the north, with their heights given in round numbers: Baker, ten thousand feet; Ranier (Tacoma), fourteen thousand, four hundred and forty; St. Helens, nine thousand, seven hundred and fifty; Adams, thirteen thousand, three hundred; and then, crossing into Oregon, Hood, eleven thousand, two hundred and twenty-five; Jefferson, ten thousand; Three Sisters, highest about nine thousand, five hundred, and lowest about eight thousand, five hundred; Diamond Peak, Thielson, Scott, the heights of which are not so accurately known, but probably do not vary much from nine thousand feet; and last of all, towering above the Klamath Lakes and looking over into California, Mount Pitt, which is nearly eleven thousand feet high. From this enumeration it appears that there are thirteen great peaks, four in Washington and nine in Oregon, of which the average height is about ten thousand feet. Besides these there are dozens of lesser heights, many of which are not even named, which attain a height of seven thousand feet. The entire Cascade Range is one tremendous mass of volcanic rock. The primeval granite is found in patches here and there underneath the flood of lava. The great peaks are in only a dormant state of volcanic energy, and show by their uneasy heaving from time to time the presence of the earth-giant chained beneath. Hood, St. Helens and Ranier, in particular, have had outbursts frequently since the settlement of the country. In 1835 and 1842, St. Helens had tremendous explosions. A river of stiffened lava, fifteen miles long and half a mile wide, is now found on the south side of the mountain; and in it are yet to be seen the twisted and half-consumed tree trunks at some time overwhelmed. Everywhere throughout the entire extent of these mountains are to be found stupendous craigs of basalt, amygdaloid, and trachyte, and wide areas of pumice-stone and heaps of ashy desolation, the emptied slag of earth's primeval furnaces, evidences of a volcanic energy which must have some time made the earth tremble.
...
Digital typed version of Elwood Evans? report was found at the
?usgennet.org? geneological website, 2008.
