May 18, 2020

Today is the 40th anniversary of the 1980 eruption of Mt. St. Helens (MSH). I have a personal connection to that event. At the time, I was an undergraduate at Oregon State University living in Corvallis, Oregon. The first eruption didn’t really impact Corvallis because the winds pushed it East darkening instead the city of Yakima, WA with heavy amounts of volcanic ash. Because Corvallis wasn’t really impacted (just a tiny dusting of ash) my friends and I thought the media was sensationalizing the event. It wasn’t until the second eruption on May 25 that we learned first hand what it was really like.

We had driven up to Portland to go home for the Memorial Day weekend break. My friends lived in SW Portland but before I dropped them off at their parent’s houses we stopped at a bar to dance and hang out. I vividly remember later that evening when the bar owner went up to the mic and said, “everybody go home, MSH is erupting again.”

After dropping my friends off I headed east to my family home near Troutdale. I was driving my Datsun B210 on I-84. The ash was coming down hard, like thick dirty snow. I had to drive slowly and run my windshield wipers on high stopping frequently at gas stations along the highway to refill the wiper fluid. It was very intense. What normally was a 20 minute drive took about 2.5 hrs. In 1980 Portland traffic was not bumper to bumper like it is today. Especially not at 2:30 am. This was the second of six eruptions between May – October 1980.

For months following the 1980 eruptions we were advised to wear MASKS and change the oil filters on our cars monthly. I remember the retailer’s running out of both. In 1998 my husband and I relocated our children to live in Ridgefield, WA. We were within eye sight of the mountain. During the 16 years we lived there I kept a stash of masks in the mud room closet, just in case.

Over a ten year period (2003 – 2013) I biannually taught Public History as an adjunct professor in the history department at Washington State University Vancouver. As part of the class assignments I had my students do an oral history project interviewing someone with a MSH story to tell; either pre, post or during the eruption. My goal was to illustrate the connection humans have between the landscape and natural disasters and how it determines where we live, work and play. At the time I was also the Executive Director of the Clark County Historical Museum and I invited my students to share their work in an exhibit we created to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the eruption. The twelve interpretive panels from our exhibit, “Reflections of Change: Memories of Mount Saint Helens,” can be seen online via the museum’s website. Visit: http://www.cchmuseum.org and click on the virtual exhibits tab.

Lead Photo credit: Austin Post. #msh #mtsthelens #mountsainthelens #1980eruption #oralhistory #publichistory #cchm #cchmuseum

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