Shishaldin

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Facts

Official Name: Shishaldin Volcano
Seismically Monitored: Yes
Color Code: GREEN
Alert Level: NORMAL
Elevation: 2857m (9373ft)
Latitude: 54.7554
Longitude: -163.9711
Smithsonian VNum: 311360
Pronunciation:
Nearby Towns:
- False Pass 23 mi (38 km) NE
- Pauloff Harbor 55 mi (88 km) SE
- Cold Bay 58 mi (93 km) NE
- King Cove 69 mi (111 km) NE
- Belkofski 80 mi (129 km) NE
Distance from Anchorage: 679 mi (1093 km)

Description

From Miller and others (1998)^[1]: "Shishaldin Volcano, located near the center of Unimak Island, is a spectacular symmetrical cone about 16 km in diameter at the base. The mountain, which rises to a summit 2857 m above sea level, is the highest peak in the Aleutian Islands and has a small summit crater from which a steady cloud of steam is emitted. The upper 2000 m is almost entirely covered by perennial snow and ice. It is flanked to the northwest by 24 monogenetic parasitic cones^[2]. The Shishaldin cone is less than 10,000 year old and is constructed on a glacially eroded remnant of an ancestral soma and shield^[2], which in turn are underlain by volcaniclastic rocks of probable late Tertiary age^[3]. Fournelle (1988)^[2] suggests that the basement may consist, at least in part, of plutonic rocks."

Name Origin

Tebenkov (1852) named this volcano "So[pka] Shishaldinskaya," which was later transliterated to "Shishaldin Volcano." G.A. Sarichev reported its Unangam Tunuu name as "Agajedan (Grewingk, 1850). Wagner (1937) wrote that it was named Volcan de Fernandez, by Martinez (Orth, 1971).

References Cited

[1] Catalog of the historically active volcanoes of Alaska, 1998

Miller, T. P., McGimsey, R. G., Richter, D. H., Riehle, J. R., Nye, C. J., Yount, M. E., and Dumoulin, J. A., 1998, Catalog of the historically active volcanoes of Alaska: U.S. Geological Survey Open-File Report 98-0582, 104 p.

title page PDF 52

intro and TOC PDF 268 KB

eastern part - Wrangell to Ukinrek Maars PDF 972 KB

central part - Chiginagak to Cleveland PDF 2,463 KB

western part - Carlisle to Kiska PDF 956 KB

references PDF 43 KB

[2] Geology and petrology of Shishaldin volcano, Unimak Island, Aleutian Arc, Alaska, 1988

Fournelle, J. H., 1988, Geology and petrology of Shishaldin volcano, Unimak Island, Aleutian Arc, Alaska: The Johns Hopkins University Ph.D. dissertation, 507 p., 2 plates, scale unknown.

[3] Reconnaissance geologic map of the Cold Bay and False Pass quadrangles, Alaska, 1978

McLean, H., Engelhardt, C. L., and Howell, D. G., 1978, Reconnaissance geologic map of the Cold Bay and False Pass quadrangles, Alaska: U.S. Geological Survey Open-File Report 78-0323, unpaged, 1 plate.