Mount Edgecumbe is a 3200′ stratovolcano located on Kruzof Island. The volcano is approximately 15 miles from the town of Sitka, which was Alaska’s capital prior to its purchase from Russia by the United States.
Mount Edgecumbe has been dormant for at least 800 years. Recently, however, there has been a swarm of over 100 earthquakes from near the volcano. The swarm does not mean that an eruption is near, but the number is somewhat unusual. The previous two years saw only twenty quakes each year. Volcanologists are studying the data to see if these recent earthquakes are volcanic or tectonic in nature.
Tlingit oral history has the volcano having small eruptions roughly 800 years ago. The last eruption in the geological record happened 4500 years ago. Mount Edgecumbe had a massive eruption 13,000 – 15,000 years ago. That eruption dropped dropped 3 feet of volcanic ash on what is now Sitka, and 98 feet of ash fell on Kruzof Island.
Alaska has had 90 volcanos that have erupted in the past 10,000 years. Currently, we have three that are at Level Orange and one that is at Level Yellow.
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