On the afternoon of February 20, 1943, a farmer named Dionisio Pulido was working in his cornfield near the small village of Parícutin, in the Mexican state of Michoacán. He and his family were preparing the field for spring planting. His wife, Paula, was burning a pile of branches nearby. It was a quiet, ordinary day in a quiet, ordinary valley.
At about four o'clock, Dionisio noticed something very strange. A long crack, about half a meter deep, opened in the ground, and smoke began to come out of it. Then the ground swelled up about two meters, and he heard a loud hissing sound. The air smelled like rotten eggs. Dionisio asked himself what was happening, but he couldn't find an answer. He was terrified, so he jumped on his horse and rode off to the village to look for his family. Luckily, he found everyone safe.
The next morning, the crack was gone. In its place stood a cone of rock and ash about 50 meters high, as tall as a 15-story building. The volcano was building itself higher every hour. After one week, it was more than 100 meters tall. Burning rocks shot into the sky day and night, and a huge cloud of ash rose above the valley. Ash piled up on roofs and fields for miles around.
For the first time in history, scientists could watch a brand-new volcano grow from its very first days. Geologists from Mexico and the United States showed up and set up camps near the cone. They wanted to find out how a volcano grows and why this one started in a cornfield. William Foshag, a scientist from the Smithsonian museums in Washington, D.C., studied the volcano for years.
The lava moved slowly, like a river of hot black rock. In June 1943, it reached the village of Parícutin, and the people had to move out. Later, lava and ash covered up the bigger town of San Juan Parangaricutiro, too. The families who lived there had to give up their homes, their fields, and their church. Because the lava was so slow, people had time to leave, and the lava itself took no lives.
Before Dionisio left his land for the last time, he put up a funny sign. It said that the volcano belonged to him!
Parícutin erupted for nine years. In 1952, it finally died down. When it stopped, it was 424 meters tall, more than four times as tall as the Statue of Liberty. In 1997, CNN named it one of the Seven Natural Wonders of the World.
Today the volcano is quiet, and visitors from all over the world come to see it. If you visit Parícutin, you can rent a horse in the town of Angahuan. You'll ride most of the way, and then you'll climb the last steep part on foot. Near the volcano, you can walk across a huge field of black lava and see a beautiful, strange sight: the tower of the old church of San Juan, still standing above the rock. Dionisio's cornfield is gone, but the story of the volcano that grew out of it is still alive.
If a volcano appeared in your backyard tomorrow, what would you do?