Human History
Before the arrival of white settlers, the areas surrounding Lassen Peak, especially to its east, south, and southeast, were the traditional homeland of the northeastern Maidu American Indians.
Lassen Peak was named in honor of the Danish blacksmith Peter Lassen, who guided immigrants past this peak to the Sacramento Valley during the 1830s. The trail that Lassen blazed never found generalized long-term use because it was considered unsafe. This trail was replaced by the Nobles Emigrant Trail, named for the guide, William Nobles, which linked the Applegate Trail in northwestern Nevada to the northern part of the Sacramento Valley.
In 1864, Helen Tanner Brodt became the first woman to reach the summit of Lassen Peak. A tarn lake on Lassen Peak was named "Lake Helen" in her honor.
Beginning in 1914 and lasting until 1921, Lassen Peak emerged from dormancy with a series of phreatic eruptions (steam explosions), dacite lava flows, and lahars (volcanic mud flows). There were 200 to 400 volcanic eruptions during this period of activity. Because of the eruptive activity and the area's stark volcanic beauty, Lassen Peak, Cinder Cone and the area surrounding were designated as the Lassen Volcanic National Park on August 9, 1916.
Read more about this topic: Lassen Peak
Famous quotes containing the words human and/or history:
“If human beings are immortal, so are animals. If matter has the ability to remember, it also has the ability to think.”
—Franz Grillparzer (1791–1872)
“Every generation rewrites the past. In easy times history is more or less of an ornamental art, but in times of danger we are driven to the written record by a pressing need to find answers to the riddles of today.... In times of change and danger when there is a quicksand of fear under men’s reasoning, a sense of continuity with generations gone before can stretch like a lifeline across the scary present and get us past that idiot delusion of the exceptional Now that blocks good thinking.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)