On June 6, 1912, the Alaska Peninsula became the site of the largest volcanic eruption of the 20th century. A brand‑new volcanic vent—later named Novarupta, Latin for “newly erupted”—burst open with unimaginable force, releasing 30 times more magma than Mount St. Helens in 1980. The explosion buried the nearby valley in ash hundreds of feet deep, plunged communities like Kodiak into total darkness for nearly three days, and sent an ash cloud around the globe.
Because the region was so remote, no human lives were lost. When scientists finally reached the site four years later, they found a surreal landscape of thousands of steam vents hissing through the hardened ash, a place they named the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes. The eruption’s aftermath was so otherworldly that it inspired the creation of Katmai National Monument in 1918, preserving a wilderness literally born overnight from a “new eruption” that reshaped the geography of Alaska.
Image: Volcanic rocks hurled across Kodiak Island by the 1912 Novarupta–Katmai eruption, photographed shortly after the event.
