Nobody was fooled, apparently, because the same prank—piling tires on the side of a volcano and setting them on fire to simulate an eruption—had been tried in 1947 with much greater success (even causing a panic in the city).

For years students from nearby St Joseph would paint a "J" on Vulcan Volcano, when the light is right it can still be seen."

In 1950 the College of St. Joseph began its move into a newly built campus on the palisades along the Rio Grande below the volcano.

Twenty years later, it closed its doors and became the campus of St. Pius X High School.The volcano is composed of a type of volcanic rock called olivine tholeiitic basalt.

Late in the eruption, subterranean pressure bulged the surface beneath the cone, causing radial cracking that resulted in emplacement of dikes around the cone.