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Paracutin

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By Duke Heath

All of the research I did on volcanos for this issue reminded me of one of the most amazing stories I had ever heard. At the age of maybe seven or eight, I loved to watch a newsreel program called "The Passing Parade." The program helped to pique my budding interest in science and how the world works.

I clearly remember one installment of the program showing a farmer with a rake out in the middle of a very flat corn field. The corn must have just been planted for the flat field resembled a freshly plowed Arkansas soybean field. As the farmer raked the ground a puff of smoke began rising from where he had raked. Thunder roared and the trees began shaking mightily as the ground began to swell and hiss from the hole formed by the rake. The small smoking mound, which had just appeared in the cornfield, grew to about two meters and began spewing fine dust and grey ash while he watched. The smell of sulfur filled the sir as the mound began to emit a high pitched, very loud and continuous whistle.

The day before this event, more than 300 earthquakes shook the area. The farmer and other witnesses became very frightened as the earth began shaking again as if announcing the birth of this hellish demon rising from the flat field. They fled only to return the following day to find the mound had grown to more than 30 feet in height. The mound had also become a cone which was launching smoking rocks high into the air.

During the day, the cone grew another 120 feet. That night, incandescent bombs blew more than 1,000 feet up into the darkness, and a slag-like mass of lava rolled over the farmer's cornfields. The new born volcano was named after a small nearby town, Paracutin, which was eventually destroyed by its namesake.

Paricutin's first year was its most violent. The mound became a cone which topped 1,500 feet in that first year. Explosions echoed all over the state of Michoacan and ash fell as far away as Mexico city. Almost all of the vegetation far miles around the crater was destroyed. By summer, lava flowing out from the volcano destroyed the nearby villages.


Though not one of the great volcanos, Paricutin allowed scientists to observe a volcano from its very birth. The knowledge gained has been invaluable in understanding and predicting eruptions throughout the world ever since. The story also had a huge impact on at least one very young scientist in the Kennedy era 60s.