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Back in 1984, when the first season of Transformers Generation 1 appeared on TV, a recent and famous volcanic eruption in the Pacific Northwest was fresh in everyone’s mind. The enormous blast from the eruption of Mount St. Helens in Washington State on May 18, 1980 caught nationwide attention in both Canada and the United States. The destruction caused by the volcanic eruption turned a huge forested area into a near desert, or moonscape.

Not coincidently, a similar volcanic eruption in a similar setting appeared in Part I of More Than Meets The Eye. Transformers G1 fans will remember the Autobot’s orange spaceship crashing into a volcano on prehistoric Earth, knocking all on board into stasis lock for four million years. It was only when the volcano that they had crashed into erupted that the ship’s computer, Teletraan-1, was jolted back online and started rebuilding the damaged occupants.

The landscape, location and volcano’s name in both the Transformers cartoon and in the comic book are very similar to the real Mount St. Helens. Although never named in the cartoon, the comic book refers to the volcano as Mount St. Hilary, and locates it in Oregon State. In reality, Mount St. Helens is just north of the Oregon State border. Already convinced by these similarities that the fictional Mount St. Hilary was based on Mount St. Helens, I wanted to find out what the real landscape near the famous volcano looked like.

The modern day view of Mount St. Helens, looking up Toutle Valley. That’s Toutle River in the foreground. It looks just like the river in the foreground of the cartoon. The volcano is the mountain furthest away with the broken, sloping top to it in and clouds lingering below the peak. Before the eruption, the volcano had a nice peak like in the cartoon shots.

The cartoon eruption shows the volcano blowing off part of its side, which is not the usual way for a volcano to erupt, but that is exactly what Mount St. Helens did. It was because it blew out to the side that the eruption did so much damage.

As I began my tour up the Toutle River Valley twenty six years after the eruption, I immediately recognized the river that I had seen on TV when I was a kid. I remembered the footage of it clogged by scorched logs, homes, a bridge, hot ash and debris. My thoughts were very much with all those affected by such a tragic natural event.

My family happened to be camping in northern Washington State when the volcano erupted. Those close to the volcano either heard nothing or watched in silence as the top of the mountain disintegrated and the ash spewed forth twelve miles into the sky. I was at a distance where I both felt the earthquake from the initial landslide that triggered the eruption, and heard a series of blasts that sounded like nearby cannon fire. It was scary because we did not know what was happening at first. Afterward, it was sad because there were many people who lost their lives that day.

Because of my experience as a kid I do not think I will forget my trip to Mount St. Helens. The banner for this page shows the view from the Coldwater Ridge visitor’s center looking up Toutle Valley towards the Mount. St. Helens. The volcano crater is still smoking in a slow, continuous eruption that is building new height back over the years. 

As you approach the humungous blast zone, the scenery changes dramatically. The explosive blast contained the force of a thousand atomic bombs, according to one guide book. At the edge of the affected area you see stands of dead trees. As you progress further forward the mountainsides are littered with dead stumps. The stumps of old growth trees, many feet in diameter, are sandblasted then broken off a couple feet above the ground as if they were matchsticks, serving to indicate the power of the stone wind that scoured the landscape. The heat first burned the vegetation then the eruption blasted the surrounding landscape and mountains down to bare bedrock. This gives the landscape a desert-like appearance, similar to that seen in the G1 cartoon.

The force of the rock from the top of the volcano blowing through the air blasted the vegetation off the surrounding landscape, scouring it down to bedrock. The area looked like a desert after the eruption. Some of the mountain tops were scoured down to resemble desert buttes, as seen in the cartoon.

Large chunks of the top of the mountain hurled through the air for miles and miles. Some landed in the north fork of the Toutle River, and then were covered by ash. Today these formations, known as hummocks, form an irregular contour in the wide river valley and some vegetation is growing back.

The hummocks, large chunks of the mountain thrown into the valley during the eruption, are easier to see in person than to capture in a photo. Twenty six years after the eruption, the vegetation is growing back and starting to cover them up.

These might be the closest thing to the hummocks in the valley. Just after the eruption there was no vegetation as there is today, so it would have looked similar to the cartoon representation.

Finally, at Johnston Ridge, in the heart of the blast zone, the massive destruction of the forested landscape is truly awesome to behold. No picture can substitute for the experience of actually being there. Even though I stood there for quite some time surveying the landscape and the volcano crater only 5 miles ahead of me, I still could not quite comprehend how the volcano erupted with such raw power.

I was also struck by how much the scene before me looked like the imagined landscape near Autobot headquarters in the G1 cartoon. This is it, I said to myself. Right after the eruption there would have been less vegetation than there is now, which would account for why it appeared that Season One was set in a desert. By Season Two there was more vegetation, which suggests either the passage of time or the storylines ventured further away from the blast zone.

The lay of the land is a bit deceiving from the above picture. This photo was put together out of about eight separate pictures. To be more accurate, imagine the photo curving around in front of you.

Finally, I leave you with some other location screenshots of Autobot Headquarters…