This church is the only remaining building left from the village of San Juan Parangaricutiro, located in the state of Michoacán in Mexico. What happened? Not far from there In 1943 the Volcán de Parícutin started to rise out of a farmer's cornfield. In the following irruption, it buried 2 villages under lava and ashes, including San Juan Parangaricutiro.
The church of San Juan is now an abandoned ruin in the middle of nowhere. During the eruption, the lava flowed around and into the church, and covered 3/4 of the town. Just beneath the church, the old houses and buildings keep buried under the rocks.
No one died from the Parícutin volcano as all residents were evacuated before the villages were covered in lava. At the end of this phase, the volcano had grown 336 metres tall. For the next eight years the volcano would continue erupting.
coordinates : 19°31'59.58"N 102°14'49.88"W
google map
pictures sources : 1 2 3 4 5
text source : 1 2 3
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awesome...
ReplyDeleteThis place is really great! Come to visit México!!!!
ReplyDeleteThat church was also featured in Henry Hathaway's dark Western Garden of Evil (1954). At the time, the vegetation hadn't even begun to reclaim the lava, so there was a starker and even more unworldly contrast between the church and the jagged volcanic rocks that half-submerged it.
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing these.
This church is fantastic, totally realizes for me some imagery I've been working on in a short story. In the story the guy is a digger in volcanic rock- seeking out buildings like this one and digging into them looking for buried treasure, scrap metal, like a miner into an old world. The volcanic scree is called the 'Gutrock', and he is a ghast.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, thanks for helping me put images to what I basically made up (though also based on shots/ideas from Pompeii).