Part of a continuing weekly series on local history by local historian David Reamer. Have a question about Anchorage history or an idea for a future article? Go to the form at the bottom of this story.
It was the morning of July 9, 1953, and a group of Fort Richardson soldiers hit the diamond for some scheduled baseball. As the warm-for-Anchorage summer day stretched on, the light began to unexpectedly dim. Soon, it was pitch black. Ash fell from the sky, lining everything in sight. The game was canceled and rescheduled. What would have otherwise been a forgettable bit of baseball instead became an interesting piece of trivia, picked up by the Sporting News, for decades the national baseball authority. That Fort Richardson game was the rarest of baseball rarities: a game called on account of volcano.
Around 5 a.m. that day, Mount Spurr, a volcano about 80 miles west of Anchorage, unexpectedly erupted, ejecting tons of particulates thousands of feet into the air. A flight from Elmendorf Air Force Base was conveniently nearby, and the airmen described a 70,000-foot-high column of smoke akin to an atomic bomb’s mushroom cloud. Lightning flashed within that column, and the sides of the mountain visibly shook.
Mount Spurr was previously listed as dormant, though there had been warning signs. That spring, civilian pilots observed steam venting from the peak for the first time in living memory. Though visible from Anchorage on clear days, the volcano was far enough away that its awakening was nothing but a curiosity to most residents.
West winds from Mount Spurr were uncommon, though not exactly rare. On most days, the massive, smoky clouds would have missed Anchorage. But on this day, the winds were just right, carrying the ash east and over the city.
The first dustings in Anchorage began around 10 a.m. As possible, civilian pilots relocated their planes to sites outside the affected area. At Elmendorf, all pilots and ground personnel raced against time. All operational aircraft were dispersed into the Interior, most to Fairbanks.
As visibility dropped to zero, the city’s airports ceased operations. For those planes unable to take off from Merrill Field, owners rushed to affix wing and cowling covers. The usually bustling airfields became gray, shadowy ghost towns.
Around 11 a.m., sensors triggered on the streetlights. Shortly after that, officials switched the lights off, fearing damage to the city’s two power plants and a resulting electricity shortage. By 1 p.m., there was complete darkness, broken only by building and car lights.
According to contemporary estimates, as much as 10,000 tons of volcanic particulates fell on Anchorage. A quarter-inch thick layer of ash draped the city, in every crevice and cranny. Shrubs and smaller trees bent under the weight. Grayish foam gathered along creeks and the Inlet shore.
One woman, thinking she was about to die, burst into public tears. A wide-eyed tourist asked locals, “How often does this happen?” While many Anchorage residents were surely terrified, some accepted the turmoil as part of life in Alaska. One little girl, freed from school, was overheard wishing the darkness “would last two days.” Local newspapers had their fun renaming the day as Ash Thursday and Spurrs-Day.
During the ashy deluge, those with umbrellas and raincoats used them. Some residents donned masks to filter out the dust. Otherwise, most residents sought shelter and stayed there until the sky began to lighten.
Of course, as is the Alaska tradition, one old-timer dismissively compared the current event in favor of something that happened decades prior. Grace Kerr of Anchorage’s Mountain View neighborhood was a child on Woody Island, off Kodiak Island, in 1912. She experienced the Novarupta-Katmai eruption that year, the largest eruption of the 20th century. Kerr recalled three days of pure darkness, poisoned water, and birds that fell dead to the ground. Compared to that, the Mount Spurr eruption was nothing to worry about. “I fell asleep and was disappointed to find everything cleared up when I awoke,” Kerr told the Anchorage Daily Times. “I wasn’t worried.”
No one died from the 1953 Mount Spurr eruption. In Anchorage, the ash and darkness contributed to just one injury. In the dark, Dorothy Combs stepped into a road and was struck by a passing truck. Her leg injury was successfully treated at the old Providence Hospital. The ash wouldn’t even harm a mosquito, making no noticeable impact on that summer’s horde.
Life in Anchorage quickly returned to normal, albeit in a dustier fashion. The next day, Friday, was clear and sunny. Mulcahy Stadium was swept clear for the planned city-league baseball game that evening. By Saturday, airlines in and out of the International Airport were back on schedule. In the following days, the wind sometimes kicked up the ash again, hampering visibility for small planes, but that was a relatively minor and sporadic issue.
Anchorage had newsies, newspaper street salesmen, at this time, and the eruption edition was the best seller since the end of World War II. Sightseeing flights to Mount Spurr became briefly popular. The owner of a local dry cleaner was overheard declaring, “Boy, is this a good day for business.” The interruption in traffic notwithstanding, the International Airport reported a record month of takeoffs and landings. So, some residents managed to profit from or despite the experience.
Local photographer Don Cutter captured footage of the blackout and cleanup in Anchorage, as well as Mount Spurr’s new crater, for Pathè News, which aired at the downtown Empress and Fourth Avenue theaters. This minute-long newsreel is available on YouTube.
Eight days later, it finally rained, washing away some of the sooty grime to local cheers. A gray crust dried on the ground thereafter, and gray-covered leaves fell that fall. That winter’s snow covered the ash, only to reveal it again the next spring with an initially gray runoff. In the summer of 1954, a year after the eruption, ash could still be found in the surrounding wilderness, under piles of leaves or in the crevices of tree bark. For many months, the Anchorage Chamber of Commerce cheerfully complied with Outside requests for samples of Spurr dust.
Not all the dust fell in Alaska. Within a week, pilots over the Great Lakes spotted clouds of ash from Mount Spurr, which carried eastward across Canada and the Atlantic Ocean. What was left in the air was by then too light to be seen from the ground. In late July and early August, dust clouds from Mount Spurr were visible over Europe -- sooty gifts from Alaska.
Key sources:
“Alaskan Volcano Erupts.” Pathè News, 1953, newsreel.
“3 Volcanoes Blow Tops, City Blanketed with Ash.” Anchorage Daily Times, July 9, 1953, 1, 4.
“Air Traffic Resumes After Volcanic ‘Rest.’” Anchorage Daily Times, July 11, 1953, 1.
“Ash Curtain Drops Over Local Airfields.” Anchorage Daily Times, July 13, 1953, 1.
“Ashes Seen in States.” Anchorage Daily Times, July 15, 1953, 1, 8.
“Boys Buy Cars, Real Estate with Paper Sale Profits.” Anchorage Daily Times
“Culled from the Ashes.” Anchorage Daily Times, July 10, 1953, 1.
“First Rain Since ‘Spurr’s Day’ Welcomed.” Anchorage Daily Times, July 18, 1953, 1.
“Game Called—Volcano.” Sporting News, July 22, 1953, 16.
Juhle, Werner, and Henry Coulter. “The Mt. Spurr Eruption, July 9, 1953.” Transactions of the American Geophysical Union 36, no. 2 (1955): 199-202.
“July Traffic Up at International Despite Volcano.” Anchorage Daily Times, August 6, 1953, 10.
“Mountain View Woman Recalls Katmai Explosion of 1912.” Anchorage Daily Times, July 10, 1953, 20.
“Notes and News.” Meteorological Magazine 85, no. 1009 (1956): 216.
“Pilot Reports Smoke Pouring from Mt. Spurr.” Anchorage Daily Times, May 11, 1953, 1.
“Rare West Wind Blew Spurr Ashes Over City.” Anchorage Daily Times, July 16, 1953, 1.
Trainer, Frank W. Eolian Deposits of the Matanuska Valley Agricultural Area, Alaska. Washington, D.C.: United States Department of the Interior, 1961.
“Volcanic Ash is No Killer of Mosquitoes.” Anchorage Daily Times, July 15, 1953, 16.
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