No town, no matter how lovely - and Mt Shasta City is lovely - could compete with the surrounding natural beauty here. Dominating the landscape, Mt Shasta is visible for more than 100 miles from many parts of Northern California and southern Oregon. Although not California's highest peak (at 14,162ft it ranks fifth), Mt Shasta is especially magnificent because it rises alone on the horizon, unrivaled by other mountains.
Mt Shasta is part of the vast volcanic Cascade chain that includes Lassen Peak to the south and Mt St Helens and Mt Rainier to the north in Washington state. The presence of thermal hot springs indicates that Mt Shasta is dormant, not extinct. Smoke was seen puffing out of the crater on the summit in the 1850s, though the last eruption is believed to have been about 200 years ago. The mountain has two cones: the main cone has a crater about 200 yards across, and the younger, shorter cone on the western flank, called Shastina, has a crater about half a mile wide.
