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In response to
"new life goal! -- nm"
by
tRuMaN
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So You Want to Buy a Volcano
Posted by
JD (aka Jason Dean)
Oct 29 '24, 08:25
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For instance, Whakaari (also known as White Island), is an island off the coast of New Zealand that also happens to be an active volcano. It has had—and still has—a series of private owners. After a Danish trader named Phillip Tapsell bought the island from the indigenous Māori people “allegedly for the price of a few barrels of rum,” a number of companies battled to install mining operations there.
In 1874, John Alexander Wilson purchased Whakaari in hopes of extracting sulfur from it. But his promises of extravagant riches never came to fruition, and in 1887, he was burned in effigy. (!!!!!) The land changed hands a few times until, in 1936, stockbroker George Raymond Buttle bought Whakaari. His reason? Like Ripley, he “rather liked the idea of owning a volcano.” Though he briefly contemplated trying to mine Whakaari, he ultimately decided against it. Basically, he just wanted to say the volcano was his own.
When the New Zealand government tried to wrest control of the volcano from him in 1952, he refused to sell it, though he allowed the island to be designated a private nature reserve. Today, the Buttle Family Trust owns the volcano, one of a few volcanoes still under private management.
Other volcanoes that have been privately controlled include the Pisgah Volcano, a cinder cone in California that was mined beginning in 1948 under a series of proprietors. The Newberry Volcano in Oregon was the subject of an extended legal battle because of mining-related ownership claims. And Crater Hill, the only remaining privately owned volcano in the Auckland volcanic field in New Zealand, is the property of another family trust.
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