40 Fun Facts About Mount Shasta

Survivors of which lost continent are said to live in a hidden city inside Mount Shasta?

Lemuria is the sunken land of the tale, which grew from an offhand 1880s mention and was cemented by a 1931 book written under a pseudonym.

Mount Shasta lies outside Shasta County; which county, with its seat at Yreka, contains the peak?

Siskiyou County, which runs along the Oregon border, counts the volcano as its highest point.

Shasta is the Cascade Range's second-highest peak, behind which volcano that towers over Washington state?

Mount Rainier rises to 14,406 feet and is also the most topographically prominent mountain in the contiguous United States.

Which naturalist survived an overnight blizzard on Mount Shasta by lying in hot sulfur springs near the summit?

John Muir wrote a dramatic popular article about the ordeal in 1877, and the mountain's easiest climbing route still carries his name.

Which creature of cryptozoology has reported sightings on Mount Shasta, alongside the UFO and hidden-city tales?

Bigfoot reports join a crowded local folklore that also features interdimensional beings and visiting motherships.

In Klamath legend, Skell stood on Mount Shasta to fight Llao, whose smashed mountain holds which Oregon body of water?

Crater Lake fills the caldera left when Mount Mazama collapsed, and the legend's fire and falling rock probably recall real eruptions.

In February 1959, Mount Shasta Ski Bowl set the US record, 15.75 feet, for snowfall from a single what?

One storm, lasting from February 13 to 19, buried the old ski area high on the volcano's southern flank.

Which town near Mount Shasta is named for a lumber mill founder who found its strong winds helped dry timber?

Weed honours Abner Weed, who in 1897 paid $400 for a local mill and 280 acres of land.

A 2002 survey of Mount Shasta's glaciers, the first detailed one in 50 years, found they had done what since 1951?

They had grown larger because heavier snowfall outpaced a two-to-three-degree warming, and the Hotlum Glacier nearly doubled in size.

When William Brewer climbed Mount Shasta in the early 1860s, the peak was wrongly believed to hold which title?

Tallest US mountain was the reputation it carried in 1862, yet the volcano is now ranked only the fifth-highest peak in California.

Mount Shasta, built from four overlapping cones, is the Cascade arc's most voluminous example of which type of volcano?

Stratovolcano is the class, and at roughly 85 cubic miles the mountain outbulks every other one in the arc, though it is not the tallest.

Which plant breeder named his hybrid daisy after Mount Shasta because its petals were the colour of snow?

Luther Burbank bred the Shasta daisy by crossing species from three continents, and it remains a favourite garden plant.

Shasta, the soda brand named for Mount Shasta and its springs, launched which flavor as its first soft drink in 1931?

Ginger ale arrived 42 years after the company began in 1889 as a bottler of mineral water, shipped out in glass-lined railroad cars.

Which river, the largest in California, begins near Mount Shasta and runs some 400 miles toward San Francisco Bay?

Sacramento River headwaters gather where three forks meet close to the city of Mount Shasta, the final community up the river.

Mount Shasta and White Mountain Peak are California's only two 14,000-foot summits outside which mountain range?

Sierra Nevada summits make up the rest of the state's fourteeners, leaving Mount Shasta alone in the Cascades and White Mountain Peak in the Great Basin.

Which Cascade volcano, about 80 miles south of Mount Shasta, erupted explosively in May 1915?

Lassen Peak is the southernmost active volcano in the Cascade Range, and its 1915 blast spread ash as far as 280 miles to the east.

Shasta Abbey, founded near Mount Shasta by British-born Jiyu-Kennett, trains monks in which religion?

Buddhism at the abbey follows the Soto Zen tradition, and its resident monks, both men and women, are vegetarian and celibate.

What destroyed the main chairlift of Mount Shasta's original Ski Bowl in January 1978, closing the resort for good?

An avalanche finished off the high-altitude resort, and no lifts ran on the mountain again until a new ski park opened lower down in 1985.

The collapse of an older Mount Shasta, at least 300,000 years ago, spawned one of Earth's biggest known what?

Landslides rarely come bigger: the debris covered more than 170 square miles of Shasta Valley, where the Shasta River now cuts through it.

Which satellite cone on Mount Shasta's western flank would rank among the Cascades' highest volcanoes on its own?

Shastina tops 12,300 feet, taller than Mount Adams, and Diller Canyon, the cleft down its side, is by far the largest such feature on any Cascade volcano.

Which cluster of dacite lava domes, a satellite of Mount Shasta, rises directly beside Interstate 5's northbound lanes?

Black Butte once carried a fire lookout on its summit, and a 2.5-mile trail still climbs to the concrete foundation left behind.

Which of Mount Shasta's glaciers is the longest glacier in California?

Whitney Glacier, named for state geologist Josiah Whitney, is also California's only valley glacier and was the first glacier confirmed in the United States.

Which saucer-shaped cloud type, said in Mount Shasta legend to hide visiting motherships, is often mistaken for a UFO?

Lenticular clouds hang stationary while the wind blows through them, forming where moist, stable air flows over a mountain.

What name do believers give the hidden city of advanced beings said to lie beneath Mount Shasta?

Telos is the usual name, and a 1905 book pictured the mountain's secret dwellers in tunnels with jewelled walls and fur-carpeted floors.

Which federal designation has Mount Shasta, a volcano inside a forest rather than a park, held since December 1976?

National Natural Landmark status recognises the best examples of geological and biological features, and the National Park Service runs the programme.

Which granite spires, protected as a state park beside Interstate 5, rise south of Mount Shasta near Dunsmuir?

Castle Crags emerged when Ice Age glaciers stripped softer rock from the granite, and an 1855 battle between gold miners and Native people was fought there.

Pluto's Cave, a 190,000-year-old cavern on Mount Shasta's northern outskirts, is what kind of volcanic feature?

Lava tube ceilings are only a few metres thick and usually collapse quickly, but the semi-arid climate here has slowed the erosion.

On a clear winter day, Mount Shasta can be seen from the floor of which lowland, 140 miles to the south?

Central Valley views are possible because the volcano rises abruptly, towering almost 10,000 feet above its surroundings.

Immigrants from which country settled around Mount Shasta in the early 1900s, working in the timber mills?

Italy sent so many mill workers and stonemasons that they established a strong Catholic presence in the towns around the mountain.

Which Native people of the McCloud River area still practise rituals on Mount Shasta, a mountain sacred to them?

Wintu ceremonies continue on the slopes, while Klamath stories make the summit the home of the sky spirit Skell.

Mount Shasta was a 'power center' for which synchronized global peace meditation, held in August 1987?

Harmonic Convergence gatherings were timed to an alignment of planets, and believers also met at Mount Fuji in Japan.

Which science-fiction author's 1941 novella Lost Legacy hides a community of powerful adepts on Mount Shasta?

Robert Heinlein drew on the mountain's hidden-city legends, and his adepts live there in secret while working to advance the human race.

Which peak, facing Shasta's west side across Interstate 5, is the highest US summit west of that highway?

Mount Eddy reaches 9,037 feet and is named for Olive Paddock Eddy, long but wrongly credited as the first woman to climb its giant neighbour.

The city of Mount Shasta was known until the 1920s by which name, honouring an innkeeper who donated the townsite?

Sisson was the name from 1886, after Justin Sisson gave land for the town and its railroad station; earlier it was Strawberry Valley, then Berryvale.

Guy Ballard, founder of the 'I AM' Activity, claimed he met which 'ascended master' while hiking on Mount Shasta?

Saint Germain supposedly set Ballard on the path to his teachings, and followers have staged an August pageant at Mount Shasta since 1950.

Peter Skene Ogden first gave the name 'Sastise' in 1827 to which Oregon volcano, before it shifted to Shasta?

Mount McLoughlin got the name from the Shasta people who helped the trapper reach the Rogue Valley, and the label later shifted south to California's peak.

Which poet recorded Mount Shasta's Native legends in the 1870s and wrote the book Life Amongst the Modocs?

Joaquin Miller was the pen name of Cincinnatus Miller, who also published a book titled Shadows of Shasta in 1881.

Which geologist, later the first director of the US Geological Survey, explored Mount Shasta's glaciers in 1870?

Clarence King heard a letter about an 1862 ascent of the peak read aloud by his former professor, and a small lake high on its satellite cone now bears his name.

Which volcanic rock erupted on Mount Shasta's western flank about 593,000 years ago, in its oldest known lavas?

Andesite and dacite are the lavas the volcano can still release, and its deposits can be detected under nearby small towns.

Which mystical order published the 1931 book that popularised Mount Shasta's hidden-city legend under a pseudonym?

Rosicrucians of the AMORC order issued it under the pen name Wishar Cerve, masking the authorship of their founder, Harvey Spencer Lewis.