Him, and they were at least two serious attempts where booth was settled, armed, ready to go. The confederates lost and pushed booth over the edge. There are a group of people centered in washington, maryland in that area who are fascinated on the topic. Some of you will know, you can take tours of his escape route. He was on the run for 12 days and then finally captured below fredericksburg, virginia. There are bus tours that you can take. Ego to the place where they finally caught and shot him, make a stop at the home of doctor samuel a mod, the physician who helped with the broken leg. Some are descendents, some are just fans and bus. Thats,. [laughter] invariably it is an interesting collection of people. And there is another group centered around the booth family home. It is the house where John Wilkes Booth was a teenager. There are homes or you can go and step into places where these events occurred. Thank you all. I have to say, it is a great honor to have people come and listen to biographers talk about their craft and be interested in it, and it means a great deal to all of us who work in seclusion all these years. We appreciate your being here. [applause] youre watching book tv on cspan2, television for serious readers. Here is a look at what is on prime time tonight. [inaudible conversations] hi, everybody. Thank you so much for coming out. Thank you so much for coming before we get started, a few housekeeping notes. If you take the time now to silence your cell phones. You have to turn it off. You can facebook and twitter and instagram. We would love for you to visit kramer. Com. You can see all the great events. Like tonight with steve olson with eruption. In his book steve interweaves the history and Science Behind the eruption of Mount Saint Helens in the account of what happened to those people who lived it and those who died. Particular connection. We are so glad he can be here with us tonight. One of the Great Stories i am sarah, by the way. One of the great things is bringing authors who have a wonderful local connection. You can see that tonight. Pleasetonight. Please join me in welcoming steve olson to kramer books. [applause] thank you, guys. [applause] i have never given a talk in kramer books before. But really i can hardly even get to tell you how to lead land to finally be doing this. My wife and our young newlyweds this is what we came for date night. We introduced to a reference to each other right over there who are now married and live in oregon not too terribly far away from where we lived in seattle. And memory is where i want to start tonight because the eruption of Mount Saint Helens on a sunday morning may 18 1980 was one of those events that was so dramatic that the people have a connection to the northwest, we tend to remember where we were when we heard the news, like i was working on this book people would tell me i remember, it was a sunday morning. I was coming back from church and heard on the radio. Or there is no indication of where we were. The sales barbecuing in my backyard. I grew up in barb in Washington State. There were about to get married three weeks away. The anniversary of the eruption is always a Good Opportunity for me to remember. We got married in rhode island. My grandmother who still lives in the small town where i lived brought back a big jar of ash edition new everyone will be interested. And i always figured that it was a good thing because i was exactly the kind of kid, interested in science and geology. One of those kids that says when the volcano started shaking in the late winter, well, i need to go see that. Out of grabbed a friend and jumped in the car and headed down 55, turned off and driven up to see the small puffs of ash that would come out of the volcano with 1st reawakened. And if i had done that on may 17 in my friend and i had camped on the volcano, i would not be here talking to you today. Fiftyseven people died from the eruption a sunday morning. The majority of them were succeeded by ash. Some people were blown off for it stops were swept away in the mudflows. A couple of people were crushed by a tree that fell on them, a couple people were burned by hot gas. Only three of those 57 were areas that the designated dangerous, and two of them have permission to be there. The only person i was breaking the law was the one victim we tender member best , cantankerous 83 yearold harry r chairman who refused to leave his lodge 4 miles away from the summit. So in the end they were just too close to an extremely dangerous okay now. With the danger zones to small . Was the eruption that much bigger than geologists that expected . And what can we learn from the tragedy of these 57 deaths . Those are the questions that inspired me to write this book. And what i discovered is this amazing, rich, and interconnected story about politics and money in science but also about life and the establishment of the National Forest in a story about the transcontinental railroad. It is really a story as big as the United States themselves. So the star began in rock island, illinois, a town on the Mississippi River 150 miles west of chicago. Can anyone get a napkin for me . It figures that i wouldi would come back to washington dc on a warm, hot day in march. So this is where a 21 yearold german immigrant moved. He took a job in the lumberyard tending the boiler. So intelligent and friendly and ambitious, and he rose quickly through the ranks. He later wrote, the secret of this way simply in my readiness to work. Within a few years thank you very much. I will pass them around once im done with them. Within a few years he and his brotherinlaw had bought and started expansion. At 1st they bought logs rafted down the Mississippi River and put those through the sawmill, but that this back theyre. A preview of the rest of the talk. [laughter] the real money way in buying land and chopping down the trees on that land. Beautiful white pine love virgin white pine. With the money he made it but more land in wisconsin and minnesota. He was an incredibly good businessman and lumber man. No other man in america knows so much about pine. In 1891 he with his family went from rock island the st. Paul minnesota so that he would be near the center of the logging operation as wisconsin became more cut over. And there he bought a house next to another remarkable businessman and visionary who is just about to complete the Great Northern railroad from st. Paul to seattle. If you ever go and have a chance to see the house, it is an amazing monument to the gilded age. The two men quickly became friends and or similar and often spent the evenings at each others houses. The only problem was he had a tendency to fall asleep early. The families are often go my living room and they would be engaged in some big monologue. So in 1899 in needed money to pay off a bond issue, but he have more land than money. By that time he had come to control not only the Great Northern railway, but the Northern Pacific railway. And in taking control of the Northern Pacific he came to control the immense landgrant. This was an immense amount of property that the federal government gave to the railroad as an inducement to build rail lines. So in return for building the line the Northern Pacific received about 40 million acres of western land. An area greater than the size of florida. Part of the land grab essentially from portland, oregono tacoma, washington between 1870 and 1873, the rail line that roughly parallels i five today. The landgrant extended out 40 miles on either side. Mount saint helens about 40 miles east. The mountain erupted, the top of the volcano was still on by the railroad. On january 31900, a few days and they announced one of the largest private land purchases in us history. For 6 an acre he and his Business Partners but almost a million acres of timber land, and with the purchase they made to fill in the area, he almost all of land between what yesterday i five and Mount Saint Helens. And this was one of the greatest investments that anyone is ever made anywhere after correcting for inflation i calculate that they made about 250 for every 1 they put into land. Fastforward to 1980, on march 20 of that year seismic detectors picked up a magnitude 4. 2 earthquake. We usually just get one or two. That did not happen in this case. Really cannot tell them apart and more. Bogen all just were sure the magma was on the move. Then about a week after the initial earthquake the small crater opened up on the top of Mount Saint Helens. This little puffs of human dash began to emerge. In march of 1980 they came back to life. The renewed activity was a national sensation. People came from all over the world to see this volcano. The last eruption of a volcano in the contiguous United States have been northern california. 1917. There were 70 aircraft all circling the mountain. They had to bring in air traffic control. At 1st they thought to limit access by setting up roadblocks. These people would exert pressure to move the roadblocks and gradually they got closer closer. The bigger problem is that the main roads are just a tiny fraction. He had been logging the area for days and in that process they had thousands of logging rights. Climb up to a ridgeline and set up camp. By the middle of april government officials realized the need a better way. The jewel line to the north and the long eastern edge. If anything came out they figured it would not be able to get over the ridgeline. They continue down to the south by the problem on the west side between the west and northwest side. At that point he was the last of an oldgrowth trees. Just gigantic, gigantic trees. So one thing government officials did is drew the line between the property in the land of the National Forest. The cell line is only Law Enforcement and scientists could go in the area. The problem was this red zone family 3 miles away from the summit. Then they drew another line and generally followed roads about 10 miles away. You could go in this area which is called the blue zone. They decided not to because they did not want to draw the zone into property. So their actually was the line where the zones relate together. About the same time something very troubling was happening with the volcano. It seemed to be caused by magma pooling underneath the volcano and pushing out the side. Very dramatically. 5 feet per day. And volcanologists really did not know what would happen. It will come cascading down the mountain at some point. But the general consensus was that it would simply be an avalanche and nothing else would happen. This just happens tohappened to be right on the side of the volcano with the danger zone was. So that was essentially the situation on the evening of saturday, may 17. The 1st clear weekend after a cloudy and rainy spring, and that evening about two dozen people were getting ready to spend the night in the area north of Mount Saint Helens. Harry truman who had refused to leave his lodge was getting ready for bed on the edge of spirit lake, again about 4 miles away from the mountain. Two people were in their cabin couple of miles down the river. They said they were doing a photographic study of the mountain from their deck. There were doing this just so that they could use the cabin, but they still got permission to be there on the weekend. The next closest person was geologist m johnson who was keeping watch about 5 miles north of the peak. Johnson had never been to this location until the day before the eruption. Filling in for a colleague who had to go away to talk with his graduate advisors in california about an educational program. He had barely escaped a volcanic eruption in alaska. He said ill go as long as someone can come the next day. On average about 7 miles away was a cartographer taking photographs for National Geographic as part of a project that they were doing, time lapse study of the mountain. That was scheduled to conclude after that weekend because it wasnt really worth it to keep taking photographs all the time. On the 2nd ridge there was a photographer with the colombian newspaper. But the other one on the Northern Ridge was a retired navy ham Radio Operator with a group called the radio amateur. So Washington State of the time do not have enough money to put monitors on the mountain and warn communities downstream if anything happened with the volcano. A group of amateurs decided that they would set of this network. Martin was the one closest, but other people were stationed around. So just past the 3rd ridge away from the mountain where Johnny Christie killian, newly wed couple from a small logging town camped at swan lake, sort of an alpine serves on the north side of the ridge. A choker setter for a warehouse or who during the week have been working a few miles away. One of three or 400 loggers who would have died if the volcano had erupted on a weekday rather than a weekend. Christie, his wife ran a forklift at the warehouse or no down in the valley. They have been married for about seven months, and their friends tell me that there were trying to have children. They could not even see the volcano from their campground. It was just out of sight over a ridge on the other side of the lake. Finally, there were three separate groups camping on the green river about 12 or 13 miles to the north. On the west side was a group of about six kids in the 20s from the longview area were out there doing the kinds of things that we were doing, drinking beer and things like that. On the eastern side there were two friends who had written their horses up a ridgeline the day before and were camped. Read between them was a family. Mike and his wife, and they had a four yearold daughter and a three monthold baby. They were taking the girls on a very 1st camping trip. I will tell you more in a moment. On sunday morning may 18 the sun rose at 536 into a completely club the sky. Other is just to the north dave johnson took some measurements. The bold expanded and contracted and then at 832 that morning something in the mountain gave way. There were a couple of geologists, and amazing coincidence. To geologists just happen to be flying over the mountain and they said they saw this crack appear on the mountain , this line from east to west, and the whole north side of the mountain to started cascading down. This avalanche occurred, but there was a gigantic cloud of gray and white which expanded. They barely got away. And then they turned around and looked back and saw this immense column . But it all happened. It was like watching a silent movie. The sound of the volcano went straight up and was muffled by the ash. So there was no sound for anyone right on the volcano. The landslide swept down, but before it can reach spirit lake this blast of hot ash and rock and gas overtook the avalanche. And this was traveling fast. Accelerated as it went. Absorbed energy. It could have gone for 500 miles. This thing hit the cabin around spirit lake and just blew them to smithereens. A few seconds later the avalanche came. About 200 feet of avalanche debris. The people who were down there were dead before they knew what was happening. Upon a ridgeline to the north dave johnson and martin watching this cloud approach. They were both on the radios and had time to communicate with people who are monitoring the radio lines including johnsons famous last words he said vancouver so they had a minute or so to look at it. It mustve looked like the end of the world as this was coming toward them. When they said johnson and martin it basically flung them in their vehicles and everything they had with them. It just snapped off trees like straws and flying all of this stuff onto the ridgeline and into the next valley and covered them with debris dash entries. Not only have they never found a johnson, they have not even found their vehicles. The 25foot motorhome that was never detected. So to the west of those ridges there was time to take a couple of photographs. So the next people were john and christy killian. The lake, which was nine miles away from the volcano, was completely devastated by the blast cloud. And as you can imagine, their story is tragic. Maybe this is a good time to mention just how immense the devastation from the blast cloud was. The area where the blast cloud knocked over trees is called the blowdown zone. If you superimpose a map on a map of washington, d. C. So that the volcano would be around National Park, then the blowdown zone extends all the way past bethesda and past landover. The last group ill tell you about is the moore family who was camped on the green river about 12 miles north of there. So even though there were fatalities in the groups both to the west and the east of the moores, the moores had camped in the shadow of Black Mountain which absorbed sort of the worst of the blast clouds influence. They were having breakfast that morning, and they noticed this cloud that was coming over the ridge to the south of them. And mike moore, who was a photographer, ran out and started taking photographs of the blast cloud. This cloud kept coming closer, and mike kept taking these photographs. Look, the photographs of the volcano never really capture some of the things that the eyewitnesses say that they saw. I mean, they described, for instance, the colors of these clouds. Mike said it was filled with greens and yellows and pink colors and churning like an egg beater, he said. That was what the cloud looked like. He said it was the most beautiful thing hes ever seen. So when this blast cloud reached their camp, and it did reach their camp, they took shelter in a hunter shack that was nearby. And they later said that the thunder from the ash cloud was so loud and so continuous to that they couldnt even hear each other speak. But they never saw a flash of lightning since the ash cloud was so thick. It was just completely dark where they were in that camp. So finally the ash began to let up, and mike and lou and bonnie and tara began to make their way down the green river. They would come across trees that had fallen acros