13 Facts About Mount Shasta

1.

Mount Shasta is a potentially active volcano at the southern end of the Cascade Range in Siskiyou County, California.

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2.

Mount Shasta has an estimated volume of 85 cubic miles, which makes it the most voluminous stratovolcano in the Cascade Volcanic Arc.

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3.

Mount Shasta is connected to its satellite cone of Shastina, and together they dominate the landscape.

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4.

Mount Shasta's surface is relatively free of deep glacial erosion except, paradoxically, for its south side where Sargents Ridge runs parallel to the U-shaped Avalanche Gulch.

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5.

At the time of Euro-American contact in the 1820s, the Native American tribes who lived within view of Mount Shasta included the Shasta, Okwanuchu, Modoc, Achomawi, Atsugewi, Karuk, Klamath, Wintu, and Yana tribes.

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6.

Smithsonian Institution's Global Volcanism Program says that the 1786 eruption is discredited, and that the last known eruption of Mount Shasta was around 1250 AD, proved by uncorrected radiocarbon dating.

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7.

The first recorded ascent of Mount Shasta occurred in 1854, after several earlier failed attempts.

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8.

In 1877, Muir wrote a dramatic popular article about his surviving an overnight blizzard on Mount Shasta by lying in the hot sulfur springs near the summit.

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9.

Early resorts and hotels, such as Shasta Springs and Upper Soda Springs, grew up along the Siskiyou Trail around Mount Shasta, catering to these early adventuresome tourists and mountaineers.

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10.

Mount Shasta was declared a National Natural Landmark in December 1976.

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11.

Lore of some of the Klamath Tribes in the area held that Mount Shasta is inhabited by the Spirit of the Above-World, Skell, who descended from heaven to the mountain's summit at the request of a Klamath chief.

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12.

Mount Shasta has been a focus for non-Native American legends, centered on a hidden city of advanced beings from the lost continent of Lemuria.

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13.

About 200 years ago the last significant Mount Shasta eruption came from this cone and created a pyroclastic flow, a hot lahar, and three cold lahars, which streamed 7.

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