The channeled scablands of eas
The channeled scablands of easThe Channeled Scablands of Eastern Washington
As we enter Washington from the east, we immediately run into the gentle rolling hills of the Palouse country. If we continue to travel westward, we suddenly enter a heavily scarred land of barren rock, channels and canyons. Rugged cliffs, basalt rock basins, concave cliffs and even giant ripple marks line the landscape. We have just reached the edges of the Channeled Scablands of Eastern Washington. The bleak but intensely unique landscape causes us to ponder the origin of the land formations. "What could have happened here?" The answer is the largest, most violent floods that man has ever known.
Geologist J. Harlen Bretz of the University of Chicago first named the Channeled Scablands in 1920. He was conducting a survey and a study of the land when he first thought up the great flood theory. He was ridiculed and laughed at when he first proposed the idea, but he stuck to his guns. He finally received support, and his theory still stands strong today.
During the Tertiary period - between 30 million and 10 million years ago- volcanic rock terrained eastern Washington. This rock floor was 10,000 feet thick in places and covered more then 100,000 square miles. The lave fields were almost completely surrounded by mountains and encircled by three rivers. As the molten rock cooled it began to crack and form hexagonal patterns through out it. These joints broke up the lava in vertical columns of basalt rock. After eruptions as a whole stopped, the lava field was tilted as a unit to the southwest. Today the northeast rim is 2,300 feet taller then the southwest, creating a natural flood plan to the Columbia River. Beginning a while after the lava cooled, windblown silt, or loess, began to accumulate over the field, eventually producing the rich farmland of the Palouse hills. The silt reaches a maximum depth in the Pullman-Colfax area at 200 feet.
The Northern Hemisphere's Ice Age began more then 2 million years ago, but the Scablands history was not yet formed until 100,000 years ago. At this time the great continental glaciers began to make their march from British Columbia to what is now known as northern Washington, Idaho, and Montana. The ice sheet divided its self in to lobes along south-trending valleys including Pend Oreille, Okanogan, Colville, and Columbia.
As the Purcell lobe moved southward, glacial ice plugged the Clark Fork Valley like a cork with a 2,000-foot ice dam. The water that was trapped behind the dam filled the valleys and tributaries for many miles to the east. This enormous amount of water formed the largest lake during the ice age, Lake Missoula. Lake Missoula stood 4,150 feet above sea level with depths reaching 2,000 feet. At the lake's peak, Lake Missoula was estimated to have...
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