Volcanoes and History
Cascade Range Volcanoes - "Volcanoes and History"

Miss A.J. Allen and Elijah White

November 1842 Eruption of Mount St. Helens
(Published in 1848)

Excerpt from:
Ten years in Oregon: travels and adventures of Doctor E. White and lady, west of the Rocky Mountains, with incidents of two sea voyages via Sandwich Islands around Cape Horn; containing also a brief history of the missions and settlement of the country, etc., compiled by Miss A.J. Allen, published by Mack, Andrus, & Co., Printers, Ithaca, New York, 1848.

Eruption of Mount St. Helens, November 20, 1842 ***
-- Excerpt from letter from Elijah White, Sub-agent of Indian Affairs, W.R.M., to T. Hartley Crawford, Esq., Commissioner Indian Affairs, April 1, 1843.


   [p.200]     ... Mount St. Helens, one of these snow-capped volcanic mountains, some sixteen thousand feet above the level of the sea, and eighty miles north-west of Vancouver, broke out upon the 20th November last, presenting a scene the most awful and sublime imaginable, scattering smoke and ashes several hundred miles distance; and in the mean time immense quantities of melted lava were rolling down its sides, and inundating the plains below. ...

Elijah White
April 1, 1843


*** Harry M. Majors, writing about the 1842-1844 eruptions of Mount St. Helens (Northwest Discovery, July 1980), suspects this date to be November 22, 1842.


Digital version of Miss Allan's "Ten Years in Oregon" was found at the
Washington State Secretary of State Website Historical Archives (2007).


 

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