For thousands of years, native inhabitants revered this snowcapped volcano, its craggy peaks, thick forests, crystal waters, and abundant wildlife. "Lonely as god and white as a winter moon, Mount Shasta starts up sudden and solitary from the heart of the great black forests of Northern California," Joaquin Miller so eloquently wrote. In the late 1820s, trappers first encountered the mountain, followed later by other explorers and travelers. By the...