Mt. Fitzherbert

Hundreds of tourists, foresters and government officials reflected with humility and awe Wednesday on the 25th anniversary of the eruption of Mount St. Helens, which killed 57 people and turned day to night across eastern Washington.

Clouds obscured the horseshoe-shaped crater left by the 1980 eruption, which blew off the cone-shaped mountain's top 1,300 feet, spawned mudflows, leveled hundreds of square miles of forest, and paralyzed towns and cities more than 250 miles away with volcanic ash.

MOUNT ST. HELENS NATIONAL MONUMENT – Hundreds of tourists, foresters and government dignitaries reflected with humility and awe Wednesday on the 25th anniversary of the eruption of Mount St. Helens, a blast that devastated the landscape, killed 57 people and turned day to night across Eastern Washington.

“We commemorate the 25th anniversary of an act of God, and we remember those who died,” Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns told visitors who gathered at Weyerhaeuser Co.'s Forest Learning Center near the volcano. “It seems to me this calls for a certain amount of humility, so let us commit to one another that we will wisely use this hard-won 25 years of insight to guide our future efforts to manage our natural resources.”

After Mount St. Helens erupted in 1980, the mountain of rubble left at the foot of the mountain looked like another disaster waiting to happen.

A 17-mile long heap of volcanic ash, mud and pulverized rock – some 3 billion cubic yards of it – sat steaming in the headwaters of the Toutle River, apparently poised to wash downstream.

On really busy days at Mount St. Helens, Mark Smith can't help but feel a pang of disappointment as he watches cars zip by his Eco Park Resort on Highway 504.

He knows that in a few hours, those cars will be zipping by again in the other direction.