Orizaba

Publication Year: 1943.

Mexico

In view of various articles on the Mexican volcanoes in the American Alpine Journal, the following data, not readily accessible, may be of interest:

Orizaba. The Aztec name “Citlaltepetl” or “Star Mountain” is connected with the legend that the body of the serpent god Quetzalcoatl was consumed by divine fire in the crater of the mountain.

The first ascent was made in 1848 by Lieut. William F. Reynolds, accompanied by Maynard and several soldiers, during the occupation of Puebla by General Scott’s army. They left an American flag on the summit with the date carved on the staff, which was found by a Frenchman, A. Daignon, in 1851.

The last eruptive period was 1545-66, and the volcano is now considered to be extinct, although Humboldt records that smoke was seen issuing from its summit as late as the beginning of the nineteenth century.

Orizaba was first measured in 1796 by Ferrer, by means of angles taken from the Encero, with a resulting figure of 17,879 ft. for the elevation. Humboldt, early in 1804, measuring from the plain near Jalapa, obtained a figure of only 17,375 ft. No carefully conducted measurement was made thereafter until 1877, when a Mexican scientific commission, composed of Plowes, Rodriguea and Vigil, made an ascent from San Andres and secured a figure of 17,664 ft. Ferrer’s figure was generally accepted until Dr. Kaska’s determination with mercurial barometer, almost a century later, increased it to 18,045 ft.

In April, 1890, Prof. Angelo Heilprin (1853-1907), later a member of the American Alpine Club and its first vice-president, led an expedition from Philadelphia whose purpose was to examine the physical features of the great volcanoes, with special reference to the vertical distribution of animal and vegetable forms. Within three weeks he ascended Orizaba, Popocatepetl, Ixtaccihuatl and Nevado de Toluca, making numerous measurements of altitude with a registered aneroid, tested and corrected at Philadelphia, at the sea level of Vera Cruz and at the observatory of Mexico City.

The results were published in the Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, xlii (1890), 251. Heilprin’s figure for Orizaba was 18,205 ft., and this elevation was then thought to be the loftiest in North America, since it was believed to overtop Mt. St. Elias, the highest Alaskan peak which had at that time been measured.

Scovell and Bunsen (1891-92) obtained an elevation of 18,314 ft. The accepted figure, 18,700 ft., is the subject of an article elsewhere in this issue.