The name Kweq' Smánit, meaning "white mountain," refers to Mount Baker as a whole, and specifically, to the glacier-covered summit above 7,000 feet.

Gonzalo Lopez de Haro was the first European to record the mountain, calling it Gran Montaña del Carmelo, meaning "Great Mount Carmel".

"[9] Prior to European colonization, the Nooksack and Upper Skagit peoples hunted and gathered on the north and south faces of the mountain.

[9] For the Nooksack, Mount Baker is extremely important in traditional religious beliefs, and was historically a great source of wealth (in the form of mountain goat wool, a highly prized commodity) and food.

[9] In 1790, Manuel Quimper of the Spanish Navy set sail from Nootka, a temporary settlement on Vancouver Island, with orders to explore the newly discovered Strait of Juan de Fuca.

Although Quimper's journal of the voyage does not refer to the mountain, one of Haro's manuscript charts includes a sketch of Mount Baker.

[22][23] The Spanish named the snowy volcano La Gran Montana del Carmelo, as it reminded them of the white-clad monks of the Carmelite Monastery.

While anchored in Dungeness Bay on the south shore of the Strait of Juan de Fuca, Joseph Baker made an observation of Mount Baker, which Vancouver recorded in his journal:About this time a very high conspicuous craggy mountain ... presented itself, towering above the clouds: as low down as they allowed it to be visible it was covered with snow; and south of it, was a long ridge of very rugged snowy mountains, much less elevated, which seemed to stretch to a considerable distance ... the high distant land formed, as already observed, like detached islands, amongst which the lofty mountain, discovered in the afternoon by the third lieutenant, and in compliment to him called by me Mount Baker, rose a very conspicuous object ... apparently at a very remote distance.

[23] By the mid-1850s, Mount Baker was a well-known feature on the horizon to the explorers and fur traders who traveled in the Puget Sound region.

It is visible from all the water and islands ... [in Puget Sound] and from the whole southeastern part of the Gulf of Georgia, and likewise from the eastern division of the Strait of Juan de Fuca.

[23]Edmund Thomas Coleman, an Englishman who resided in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada and a veteran of the Alps, made the first attempt to ascend the mountain in 1866.

After approaching via the North Fork of the Nooksack River, the party navigated through what is now known as Coleman Glacier and ascended to within several hundred feet of the summit before turning back in the face of an "overhanging cornice of ice" and threatening weather.

[4] The volcano sits atop a similar older volcanic cone called Black Buttes, which was active between 500,000 and 300,000 years ago.

Subsequently, eruptions in the Mount Baker area have produced cones and lava flows of andesite, the rock that constitutes much of the other Cascade Range volcanoes such as Rainier, Adams, and Hood.

The largest of these cones is the Black Buttes edifice, active between 500,000 and 300,000  years ago and formerly bigger than today's Mount Baker.

[29][39] Source:[28] Around 6,600 years ago, a series of discrete events culminated in the largest tephra-producing eruption in postglacial time at Mount Baker.

[4] First, the largest collapse in the history of the volcano occurred from the Roman Wall and transformed into a lahar that was over 300 feet (91 m) deep in the upper reaches of the Middle Fork of the Nooksack River.

[43] In 1843, explorers reported a widespread layer of newly fallen rock fragments "like a snowfall" and that the forest was "on fire for miles around".

These fires were unlikely to have been caused by ashfall, however, as charred material is not found with deposits of this fine-grained volcanic ash, which was almost certainly cooled in the atmosphere before falling.

[44] A short time later, two collapses of the east side of Sherman Crater produced two lahars, the first and larger of which flowed into the natural Baker Lake, increasing its level by at least 10 feet (3.0 m).

[34][41] On 26 November 1860, passengers who were traveling by steamer from New Westminster to Victoria reported that Mount Baker was "puffing out large volumes of smoke, which upon breaking, rolled down the snow-covered sides of the mountain, forming a pleasing effect of light and shade.

Numerous small debris avalanches fell from Sherman Peak and descended the Boulder Glacier; a large one occurred on July 27, 2007.

[47][48] In early March 1975, a dramatic increase in fumarolic activity and snow melt in the Sherman Crater area raised concern that an eruption might be imminent.

[41][49] Other than the increased heat flow, few anomalies were recorded during the geophysical surveys, nor were any other precursory activities observed that would indicate that magma was moving up into the volcano.

[27] Several small lahars formed from material ejected onto the surrounding glaciers and acidic water was discharged into Baker Lake for many months.

Recent and ongoing projects include gravimetric and GPS-based geodetic monitoring, fumarole gas sampling, tephra distribution mapping, new interpretations of the Schriebers Meadow lava flow, and hazards analyses.

The Mount Baker Volcano Research Center[31] maintains an online archive of abstracts of this work, and an extensive references list, as well as photos.