Historically well known

so most people know about Pompeii, and the eruption of Mount Versuvius in Italy 2,000 years ago. The volcanic casts of humans is well known. But no one knows who the victims were, or their lives they led, except they were well off Romans. And some were slaves. But that is all. So I have another story to tell, with the back story thrown in. So maybe don’t be sad at their demise. Maybe they don’t deserve to be well known in history. You be the judge.

The west coast of North America is famous for the Pacific Rim of Fire, where two tectonic plates collide together and rub against each other causing earthquakes and volcanic eruptions to occur. Tall, stand alone mountains rise up in the landscape of Washington, Oregon and California, snow capped and stunningly beautiful, some long dormant according to human lifespans, some still active, spewing smoke, ash and hot liquid lava into the air and running down their sides, causing nervousness to the local residents who have settled nearby. Old lava flows stand testament to their volcanic pasts, and even more recent explovise eruptions like the violent eruption of mount Saint Helen in Washington in 1980.

Even more subtle are some of the place names in this region, a clue of what was, and what could be in store for unsuspecting settlers who are drawn to the region for its magnificent views, and vegetation, rivers and lakes that cover the area, and the wildlife and other natural offerings the region has, like gold for the taking, enough to make you rich beyond your dreams. Names like the historic 1849 gold rush town of Volcano, nestled in the Sierra Nevada mountains of northern california, situated on hwy 49 near Sutter Creek, San Andreas, Jackson and Dry Town. No looming volcanic mountain to see, but volcanic rocks sprinkled all around to let you know there was a dormant volcano once in the area,no oral stories passed down from MiWok elders about a volcanic catastrophic event that occurred since they have been in the area for the last 13,000 years, but maybe will be once again. All we can hope is that we won’t be around when it explodes into life again. Volcano is a quiet little town, not much there to see, just an old hotel with an old lady sitting on the front porch watching cars drive by. Legend has it that she came to Volcano in a covered wagon over the mountains on the Oregon trail when she was a young girl, and now in her 90s. Maybe her 100s. She’s dead now. But there are other people living in Volcano, non descript people, not famous, not successful entrepreneurs, just people living their lives in the back country, with stories that they don’t tell, and no one knows about. Like the couple who stole all their inventory from a friend who was too trusting, and lived on the sale of it for years. They had no friends, and they wondered why. They were lonely, and fought all the time. He hit her, broke her arm once, her leg another time. And then there was a nearby neighbor on Shake Ridge Road who jumped a gold claim from an old neighbor who forgot to renew his claim, and in the process lost thousands of dollars of gold that he couldn’t remove from his mine that he had been digging for years. Or another couple who spent years partying on alcohol and marijuana and cocaine, the wife trading sex for drugs from the motor cycle riders of the biker gang she hung out with, and her husband sold illegal guns out of the garage to the same outlaw bikers. These were the kind of people who lived their sordid, desperate lives in Volcano. They were never going to amount to anything. Unless something dramatic happened to change things for them. The gun runner stashed his stock pile of illegal guns in a container half buried in his back yard, his wife hid her stolen inventory of jewelry in several metal boxes in her spare bedroom which she never used because no one ever came to visit and stay the night. The claim jumper hoarded his stash of I’ll gotten gold in his garage. Worried that someone would steal it From him.

It was a cold night, and everyone in volcano was inside their houses, tucked away for the night. There had been a series of small tremors all day, nothing out of the ordinary for California. The husband and wife were drinking hard, and were almost comatose. The claim jumper too, but he was alone. Eventually, they all went to sleep, some in their beds, some in the easy chair in the front room. All over the town, people living their quiet, lonely lives went to sleep, another day gone.

while they all slept, a fissure opened up on the side of a rocky hill, and thousands of tons of poisonous volcanic poisonous gas sprayed out of the earth and blanketed the town. Silently. Deadly. Almost no one was aware of what was happening. Some were awake, and could smell the sulphur in the air, and saw their dogs gasping for breath, and collapsing onto the ground. There was panic, and some cars sped off down the road away from Volcano towards Sutter Creek or Pine Grove. Most never made it, and either were overcome by the poison as gas, or became so frenzied that they lost control of their vehicles and crashed. Word of the event never made it out of the town. Hours later, hot volcanic ash started to escape through the fissure, and all over the town it started to fall and settle over everything. A blanket of grey ash covered everything, seeped into houses, into cars, covered bodies lying in beds, in chairs, lying on the floor, on the ground. It was so hot people and animals were cooked. After two hours the ash stopped falling, and hot lava seeped out of the fissure and like slow sticky treacle formed a river running down the hillside. This went on all night, before finally stopping. Dead silence covered the town. Nothing moved. All was dead.

In the morning, realization hit as people in surrounding towns found out something bad had happened in the town of Volcano. First responders came in first, sheriff deputies, then state officials, then federal officials, followed by news reporters, camera men, the military, cadaver dogs, the president with his secret service detail. Eventually, the town was cordoned off from the public while the officials investigated. It made National and international news, and ran for three weeks before being replaced by the latest scandal to rock Washington D.C.

volcano disappeared from everyone’s memory, no one went up the road into the town, which was still cordoned off. Years went by, then decades. The world moved on, without Volcano. Centuries passed, and then a new millennium came.

Archeolgists from the university at Berkeley came to Volcano to uncover the ruins of the town, and discovered a treasure trove of human casts, in houses, cars, on the ground out in the open, 21st century artifacts, a gold horde, a gun horde, a jewelry horde, all worth millions of dollars. Finally, these unlikeable, invisible people were brought into the light, and became known all around the world. More well known than Pompeii.

And now you know the whole story.