Mount Edgecumbe and the April Fool's Prank That Was Not Entirely a Joke

Mount Edgecumbe, the extinct volcano visible from Sitka across the sound, last erupted approximately four thousand five hundred years ago. It is classified as potentially active. The United States Geological Survey monitors it, because a volcano with a four-thousand-five-hundred-year gap in its eruption record can still have a future.

On April first, nineteen seventy-four, a local prankster named Oliver Bickar, known around Sitka as Porky, flew to the summit crater by helicopter, deposited a hundred old tires that he had spent weeks collecting, and set them on fire.

The column of black smoke was visible from Sitka. The Coast Guard scrambled a reconnaissance helicopter. The National Weather Service issued a statement. A federal geologist was contacted to assess whether Edgecumbe might actually be showing signs of activity. When the helicopter reached the summit, it found the burning tires and, in the snow beside them, a message that Bickar had arranged in large letters: APRIL FOOL.

Bickar had planned the prank for four years, waiting for a clear April first. He had cleared it with no one. He found the episode thoroughly worth it.

The story is told in Sitka as a piece of local lore, which it is. It is also a reminder that the geography of Alaska includes active geological systems that do not announce themselves in advance. The Aleutian Arc is among the most volcanically active chains on earth. Pavlof, Redoubt, Augustine, and Shishaldin have all erupted within recent decades. Edgecumbe has not, but the USGS continues to watch it, because four thousand five hundred years is not long in geological time.