Editing Mount St. Helens (section)

===Exploration by Europeans===
[[File:Fur trapper in Mount St Helen area.jpg|thumb|alt=Man by wooden building that has six fur pelts on it.|19th-century photo of a [[fur trapper]] working in the Mount St.&nbsp;Helens area]]
[[File:The Town Crier, v.12, no.33, Aug. 18, 1917 - DPLA - de44e160705c9a8bd082814fa232922c (page 1).jpg|thumb|A [[newspaper]] article from 1917 showing the northeast face of Mount Saint Helens. Although the newspaper is from 1917, the actual photograph was taken in 1899.]]
[[Royal Navy]] Commander [[George Vancouver]] and the officers of [[HMS Discovery (1789)|HMS ''Discovery'']] made the Europeans' first recorded sighting of Mount St.&nbsp;Helens on May 19, 1792, while surveying the northern [[Pacific Ocean]] coast. Vancouver named the mountain for British diplomat [[Alleyne FitzHerbert, 1st Baron St Helens]], on October 20, 1792,<ref name="crvn"/><ref>{{cite book |last1=Vancouver |first1=George |author-link=George Vancouver |title=A Voyage of Discovery to the North Pacific Ocean, and Round the World |date=1798 |location=London, UK |pages=421–422 |url=https://archive.org/stream/voyageofdiscover01vanc#page/420/mode/2up |oclc=54529835 |ol=24592146M}}</ref> as it came into view when the ''Discovery'' passed into the mouth of the Columbia River.

Years later, explorers, traders, and missionaries heard reports of an erupting volcano in the area. Geologists and historians determined much later that the eruption took place in 1800, marking the beginning of the 57&nbsp;year-long Goat Rocks Eruptive Period (see [[#Geology|geology section]]).<ref name=Harris1988/>{{rp|page=217}} Alarmed by the "dry snow", the Nespelem tribe of northeastern Washington supposedly danced and prayed rather than collecting food and suffered during that winter from starvation.<ref name=Harris1988/>{{rp|page=217}}

In late 1805 and early 1806, members of the [[Lewis and Clark Expedition]] spotted Mount St.&nbsp;Helens from the Columbia River but did not report either an ongoing eruption or recent evidence of one.{{sfn|Pringle|1993}} They did however report the presence of [[quicksand]] and clogged channel conditions at the mouth of the [[Sandy River (Oregon)|Sandy River]] near Portland, suggesting an eruption by [[Mount Hood]] sometime in the previous decades.

In 1829, [[Hall J. Kelley]] led a campaign to rename the Cascade Range as the President's Range and also to rename each major Cascade mountain after a former [[President of the United States]]. In his scheme Mount St.&nbsp;Helens was to be renamed Mount Washington.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Meany |first=Edmond S. |author-link=Edmond S. Meany |year=1920 |title=Origin of Washington Geographic Names |journal=The Washington Historical Quarterly |volume=XI |pages= 211–212 |publisher=Washington University State Historical Society |url= https://books.google.com/books?id=dbsUAAAAYAAJ |access-date=2009-06-11}}</ref>