About Paricutin...

Paricutin is a cinder-cone volcano. It formed in a very interesting way. One day a man was farming in his cornfield.  All of the sudden the earth opened up beneath him and started spewing out lava. The villagers think this was because their god was angered. By the end of that week,  the volcano stood 450 feet tall! In 2 months it stood 1,000 feet tall! The eruption destroyed two villages, Paricutin and San Juan Parangarcutriu. It also turned farmland into volcanic waste.There was a disaster area of 25 square kilometers. Today,  Paricutin stands 1,345 feet above its base and 9,213 above sea level. Paricutin is near the city Urupan in Mexico which has a population of 279,229. The formation of the volcano started on Feb. 20 1943. The last eruption of the volcano was in 1952. Later that same year, it went dormant. It is the newest volcano in the western hemisphere.  It is part of the volcanic axis called the transversal.  The volcanic axis is a line of volcanoes that stretch across Mexico.