Mount Baker, the northernmost of Washington's volcanoes, is a glacier-clad andesitic stratovolcano constructed above the E flank of the eroded mid-Pleistocene Black Buttes volcano and SW of the early Pleistocene 4.5 x 8 km rhyodacitic Kulshan caldera. With the exception of the Schreibers Meadow cinder cone on the SE flank, which formed about 9,800 years ago, Holocene volcanism has been confined to the central conduit. A major eruption about 6,500 years ago, it's largest eruptive event during the Holocene, was accompanied by a collapse that sent lahars down the Nooksack drainage. Early settlers in the Puget Sound region as far away as Victoria, British Columbia, observed 19th-century activity, all of which consisted of relatively minor phreatic eruptions. Sherman Crater, the historically active crater immediately south of the summit, has been the site of increased steam emission since 1975. The Nooksack Indian Tribe referred to the volcano as Kweq Smaenit, the "White Mountain." The Lummi Nation knew Mount Baker as Koma Kulshan.