Mount St. Hilary
- Mount St. Hilary is a volcano in the Generation 1 continuity family.
Fiction
Marvel Comics UK continuity
The Transformers space cruiser, the Ark, crashed into the side of the dormant volcano roughly four million year ago where it lay undisturbed until the volcano erupted again in 1984. The explosion reactivated the systems aboard the Ark which promptly set about restoring the Autobots and Decepticons on board.
Mount St. Hilary would serve as the headquarters of the Autobots for the next few years. At one point Wheeljack installed a number of automated gun emplacements around the volcano. These were hidden inside the rock face, emerging through sliding panels as they were needed.
Under the leadership of Grimlock, the Autobots completed repairs on the Ark and successfully relaunched it into space. The hole left behind still contained a variety of discarded machinery and communications systems. These were later used by the Autobot Goldbug to send a distress call that was eventually received by the Autobot Headmasters on Nebulos.
They answered the distress call and made their way to Earth followed by the Decepticons. Tracking the source of the signal they arrived at Mount St. Hilary to find Spike Witwicky looking for his missing brother Buster.
Not long after the Decepticon Headmasters attacked and trapped Spike in the volcano. Scorponok caused molten lava to erupt from the cavern floor. Fortress Maximus’ headmaster, Galen, attempted to save Spike by pushing him out of the path of a rock fall and dies himself in the attempt.
After this Mount St. Hilary played no further role in the Transformers war.
Animated continuity
The volcano that the Transformers crash into is never explicitly named in the cartoon series and neither is the State in which it is located. There is no reason that it couldn’t be called Mount St. Hilary but there is no canonical evidence within the series to back this up.
Beast Wars
In the Beast Wars episode The Agenda the Ark is uncovered by the Predacon leader Megatron but the volcano itself is again never given a name. This however makes sense as Beast Wars is set in prehistory and therefore the volcano at this stage has no name. It could however eventually be named Mount St. Hilary. Beast Wars did for the first time gave the Autobot spaceship the name the Ark outside of the comic continuity; therefore it is possible that the writers also intended the volcano to be the same as that shown in the comics.
Where is Mount St. Hilary?
In the Marvel comics continuity it is stated that the volcano is located in Oregon not far from Portland. Subsequent events also largely take place in Oregon around (and in) the city of Portland. A possible location for the volcano could be the Boring Lava Field near Portland which does contain a number of volcanoes similar to the one shown but this is never specified within the comic itself.[1]
Assuming that the volcano that appears in the cartoon is Mount St. Hilary and is located in the same State then it seems to be part of a largely desert landscape which does not seem to fit with the geography and climate of the Portland area.[2] As mentioned above the area is home to the Boring Lava Field but given the desert landscape it is more likely that the volcano would be located in the South-Eastern part of Oregon.
The location of the Decepticon headquarters however, implies that the Transformers crashed somewhere in the coastal region. Portland is about 60 miles from the nearest coastline so it is still possible the volcano could be located in that area but as mentioned the desert landscape really doesn’t fit in with this.[3]
