More than four decades after the 1980 Mount St. Helens eruption, area tourism — like the mountain’s landscape — is still struggling to return to pre-blast norms.
The number of visits to private tourist locations near the volcano have plummeted since that May 18, 1980, morning when a column of ash burst out of Mount St. Helens, eventually killing 57 people, as well as destroying 200 homes, and land used for fishing, hunting and timber harvests.
Last year, there was another blow. A landslide took out a portion of the Spirit Lake Memorial Highway and the only access to the U.S. Forest Service’s Johnston Ridge Observatory — the main tourism center on the north side of the mountain, where the eruption’s crater is located.
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