Agrihan

The Agrigan, (other names: Agrihan, Agiguan, Aguigan, Agujan, Granger, Grigan, Francisco Xavier and St. Angel) is a stratovolcano, which forms the homonymous island in the Pacific Ocean. Agrigan belongs geographically to the archipelago of the Marianas and politically to the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands.

Geography

Agrigan is with 965 meters the highest volcano of the Mariana island arc. From the ocean floor to the summit of the volcano has a total height of more than 4000 meters. The densely forested island is elliptical about 9 km long and up to six kilometers wide and has an area of ​​about 44 km ². The summit region is a 500 -meter-deep caldera, which is about two kilometers long and one kilometer wide. The caldera floor has some lava flows and two volcanic cones, which probably originated in the only known eruption in April 1917. As a result of the eruption with a thickness of four on the Vulkanexplosivitätsindex ( VEI ) is a village was evacuated on the southeast coast.

History

From a European perspective Agrigan was discovered on June 11, 1522 Gómez de Espinosa and Cyco or La Griega named. Espinosa had taken part in the circumnavigation by Ferdinand Magellan after Magellan's death and tried unsuccessfully to reach by boat Trinidad through the Pacific to Mexico. As the resident on the island Chamorros behaved repellent, Espinosa could not anchor. He kidnapped a Chamorro order to use it as informants. 1669 went to the Spanish missionary Diego Luis de Sanvitores Agrigan. The islanders were deported in 1695 on the island of Saipan, and three years later to Guam.

1810, when Agrigan was a Spanish colony, attempted settlers from Hawaii and the United States to create plantations on the island, however, were reported. From the 1850s, the island was leased to companies. In the 1870s, first coconut plantations were established. Around 1880 was Adolph Capelle, a merchant of Brunswick, lessees of the island. It exported copra and employed about 20 seasonal workers on the island, which came from the archipelago of the Caroline Islands and had their principal place of residence on the islands of Saipan or Guam.

After the sale of the Northern Mariana to the German Reich in 1899 Agrigan was until 1914 part of the colony of German New Guinea. During this time the island was leased to the Pagan Society, the docked more coconut plantations. When the German District Officer Georg Fritz in May 1901 visited the island, 32 people lived in the 15 cabins of a working office in the southwest of the island. Every year, 100 tons of copra were recovered. In September 1905 and in September 1907 severe typhoons destroyed the coconut plantations almost completely. According to estimates from 1912 162 hectares of coconut plantations were present on Agrigan; lack of capital, however, the Pagan Society was unable to systematically manage the plantations.

Between 1919 and 1944 Agrigan was administered by Japan as part of the South Pacific Mandate. From 1947 the island belonged to the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands of the United States; Since 1978, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands. 1967 to have lived 94 people Agrigan.

According to a report on increasingly active fumaroles the nine islanders were evacuated in August 1990 because a volcanic eruption was feared. 1990 and 1992 studies disclosed no evidence of an increased activity of the volcano. In the caldera, there were 25 solfataras and a boiling hot spring; also occurred in several places of steam. In 2000, six people were living in one of the original four settlements on the island. According to the census of 2010, the island was uninhabited.