Bogoslof Volcanoes
What do you do when you are President of the United States and you suddenly find you have a brand-new island poking up out of the sea, 20 miles off your shoreline? You claim it and make a bird sanctuary out of it, at least that is what Theodore Roosevelt did in 1909.
The beginnings of the island, Bogoslof volcano, actually existed in 1768 in the form of a rock, called Ship Rock, rising sharply out of the sea. Captain Cook saw it when he sailed by in 1788. Recognition that a new volcanic island was being born came during May 1796. That month an observer standing on Umnak Island, half-way out along the Aleutian Chain, saw a new black object appear in the sea, 20 miles off to the north.
As the new island poked up, there were brilliant flames that turned night to day, and many earthquakes and loud thundering noises. Pumice and even stones fell on Umnak. Three days later the flames and the earthquakes subsided to leave a cone-shaped island centered to the south of Ship Rock and connected to it.
The new island underwent some changes during the next hundred years. Then, in 1883, a new companion volcano birthed, about one mile north of Bogoslof. Known as New Bogoslof, and also Grewingk, after an early Alaskan geologist, the newer island now has the name Fire Island.
Over the next six years people observed Fire Island from time to time and watched it grow. A photograph taken in 1883 shows Fire Island to be a curious fantasy of uptilted and jagged spires. This appearance evidently caused the spectators to believe that crustal uplift created the island. Instead, the structure is a lava dome such as often wells up in volcanic vents. Confounded by the lack of a cone appearance, one scientist suggested that subsiding mountains on the Alaskan mainland, 400 miles off to the east, must have somehow pushed up the fantastic tip of Fire Island.
Several years later, in 1906, a new jagged pile of lava thrust up above the sea surface to form yet another island midway between Bogoslof and Fire Island. At that time Fire Island had stopped smoking, as apparently had Bogoslof.
One scientist, presumably the same one who thought subsiding mountains on the Alaskan mainland caused Aleutian volcanoes to grow, predicted that all three islands would wash away within a hundred years. No sooner was this said when new activity commenced in April 1909, giving rise to fiery lights capable of being seen 50 miles away. The very next month, President Roosevelt turned the whole area into a bird refuge. All those hot rocks engulfed in sulfur fumes in their legally assigned new habitat must have impressed the birds no end.
Actually, Teddy Roosevelt acted with foresight because by 1922 a visitor reported the area to have a tomb-like silence interrupted only by the raucous squawking of sea gulls and the terrifying roar of sea lions. He also said the three islands had a look of permanence. Still, all was not done, for in 1927 a new dome thrust up in defiance of the ocean waves which over the years had steadily been eroding away the Bogoslof Islands. Though changing rapidly, the islands exist today. The ocean may win and totally destroy the islands, but chances are that future eruptions will restore them in some form and that birds and sea lions will continue to roost there in the intervals between eruptions.
