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Before the devastating May 18, 1980 eruption, Mount St. Helens was considered to be one of the most beautiful and most frequently-climbed peaks in the Cascade Range. Spirit Lake was a vacation area offering hiking, camping, boating, and fishing.
USFS Photograph taken before May 18, 1980, by Jim Nieland, U.S. Forest Service, Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument
From: Pringle, 1993, Roadside Geology of Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument and Vicinity: Washington State Department of Natural Resources, Division of Geology and Earth Resources Information Circular 88
- The first documented observation of Mount St. Helens by Europeans was by George Vancouver on May 19, 1792, as he was charting the inlets of Puget Sound at Point Lawton, near present-day Seattle. Vancouver did not name the mountain until October 20, 1792, when it came into view as his ship passed the mouth of the Columbia River.
- A few years later, Mount St. Helens experienced a major eruption. Explorers, traders, missionaries, and ethnologists heard reports of the event from various peoples, including the Sanpoil Indians of eastern Washington and a Spokane chief who told of the effects of ash fallout. Later studies determined that the eruption occurred in 1800.
- The Lewis and Clark expedition sighted the mountain from the Columbia River in 1805 and 1806 but reported no eruptive events or evidence of recent volcanism. However, their graphic descriptions of the quicksand and channel conditions at the mouth of the Sandy River near Portland, Oregon, suggest that Mount Hood had erupted within a couple decades prior to their arrival.
- Meredith Gairdner, a physician at Fort Vancouver, wrote of darkness and haze during possible eruptive activity at Mount St. Helens in 1831 and 1835. He reported seeing what he called lava flows, although it is more likely he would have seen mudflows or perhaps small pyroclastic flows of incandescent rocks.
- On November 22, 1842, Reverend Josiah Parrish, while in Champoeg, Oregon, (about 80 miles or 130 kilometers south-southwest of the volcano), witnessed Mount St. Helens in eruption. Ash fallout from this event evidently reached The Dalles, Oregon (48 miles or 80 kilometers southeast of the volcano). Missionaries at The Dalles corroborated Parrish's account. Captain J.C. Fremont recounts the report of a clergyman named Brewer, who gave him a sample of ash a year later (Wilkes, 1845):
"On the 23rd day of the preceding November, St. Helens
had scattered its ashes, like a light fall of snow, over
the Dalles of the Columbia." - Other accounts of the same ashfall note that it was "like fine sand", its color "appeared like ashes", and the odor was "that of sulphur" (Majors, 1980).
- Contemporary sketches and paintings by Paul Kane suggest the mountain was probably erupting at a point halfway down the north slope before or during 1847. The vent was apparently the Goat Rocks dome, which was removed by the 1980 eruption. On the basis of these and other observations, scientists think eruptive activity may have continued intermittently until 1857.
- Small eruptions were reported in 1898, 1903, and 1921, but these events were not independently confirmed, nor have their deposits been identified. Judging by the nature of the post-May 18, 1980, activity at Mount St. Helens, it is likely that these events were steam emissions, small explosions, or large rockfalls.
From: Tilling, Topinka, and Swanson, 1990, Eruptions of Mount St. Helens: Past, Present, and Future: USGS Special Interest Publication
- Some Indians of the Pacific Northwest variously called Mount St. Helens "Louwala-Clough," or "smoking mountain." The modern name, Mount St. Helens, was given to the volcanic peak in 1792 by Captain George Vancouver of the British Royal Navy, a seafarer and explorer. He named it in honor of a fellow countryman, Alleyne Fitzherbert, who held the title Baron St. Helens and who was at the time the British Ambassador to Spain. Vancouver also named three other volcanoes in the Cascades- Mounts Baker, Hood, and Rainier-for British naval officers.
- The local Indians and early settlers in the then sparsely populated region witnessed the occasional violent outbursts of Mount St. Helens. The volcano was particularly restless in the mid-19th century, when it was intermittently active for at least a 26-year span from 1831 to 1857. Some scientists suspect that Mount St. Helens also was active sporadically during the three decades before 1831, including a major explosive eruption in 1800. Although minor steam explosions may have occurred in 1898, 1903, and 1921, the mountain gave little or no evidence of being a volcanic hazard for more than a century after 1857. Consequently, the majority of 20th-century residents and visitors thought of Mount St. Helens not as a menace, but as a serene, beautiful mountain playground teeming with wildlife and available for leisure activities throughout the year. At the base of the volcano's northern flank, Spirit Lake, with its clear, refreshing water and wooded shores, was especially popular as a recreational area for hiking, camping, fishing, swimming and boating.
From: Tilling, Topinka, and Swanson, 1990, Eruptions of Mount St. Helens: Past, Present, and Future: USGS Special Interest Publication
- Ancestral Mount St. Helens began to grow before the last major glaciation of the Ice Age had ended about 10,000 years ago. The oldest ash deposits were erupted at least 40,000 years ago onto an eroded surface of still older volcanic and sedimentary rocks. Intermittent volcanism continued after the glaciers disappeared, and nine main pulses of pre-1980 volcanic activity have been recognized. These periods lasted from about 5,000 years to less than 100 years each and were separated by dormant intervals of about 15,000 years to only 200 years. A forerunner of Spirit Lake was born about 3,500 years ago, or possibly earlier, when eruption debris formed a natural dam across the valley of the North Fork of the Toutle River. The most recent of the pre-1980 eruptive periods began about A.D. 1800 with an explosive eruption, followed by several additional minor explosions and extrusions of lava, and ended with the formation of the Goat Rocks lava dome by 1857.
