Orizaba is situated 151 km from the Port of Veracruz City on federal highway 150 in the State of Veracruz, Mexico.
Orizaba is one of the most important cities of Mexico.

In this picture we can see a mural of the sister cities of Portsmouth, OH., and Orizaba is in the middle of them.

Pico de Orizaba

Pico de Orizaba is the easternmost stratovolcano in the Trans-Mexican Quaternary volcanic belt. The volcano is located on a major normal fault that marks the Altiplano from the Mexico Gulf coastal plain. Cross-section of Pico de Orizaba from Cantagrel and others (1984). The oldest rocks from the volcano are 1.5 million years old. Most of the volcano is made of andesite. About 100,000 years ago the composition shifted to dacite and tephra and block and ash flows were produced by Plinian eruptions and the collapse of extrusive domes. The terminal cone is 1,500 m tall and 4,000 m in diameter.

Pico de Orizaba last erupted in 1687, producing a small volume of gray ash. Eruptions in 1537 and 1613 produced small block-lava flows. More common in the volcano's history are the repeated eruptions in Saint-Vincent type pyroclastic flows. This type of pyroclastic flow, named for the volcanoes on the island of Saint-Vincent, are the result of flows from summit craters produced by the backfall of ejecta from the margins of vertical eruption columns. Saint-Vincent type pyroclastic flows were common during the 1902 eruption of Mt. Pelee.

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