novarupta

Located in the present day Katmai National Park and Preserve covering the Kodiak archipelago, Kenai Peninsula and Bristol Bay of Alaska, the caldera and volcanic dome of Новарупта, Latin for “newly erupted” began forming on this day in 1912, expelling ash and lava over the next sixty hours in volumes that equalled thirty Mounts St. Helens.
The largest event of its kind under the twentieth century, it is only comparable with the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo. One notable legacy to be found in the reserve originally established as a monument to protect the volcanic field is the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes, hewn out by the pyroclastic flow of the eruption, which still colour the canyon to the present day, the feature having been named by a member of the National Geographic Society, Robert F. Griggs—a botanist by training, who came to study the aftermath of the volcano in 1916.