Cataclysms on the Columbia: The Great Missoula FloodsCataclysms on the Columbia tells two stories. One follows geological research that challenged the scientific paradigm of the early 20th century, and the other chronicles the result of that research: the discovery of powerful prehistoric floods that shaped the Pacific Northwest. The cataclysms at the end of the last Ice Age left a scabland of buttes, dry falls, and rocky gorges, but it took the detective work of geologist J Harlen Bretz to prove it to the world. His lifetime of research and unshakeable belief changed geology forever. |
Contents
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS TO THE SECOND EDITION ΧΙ | xi |
The Living Changing Earth | 19 |
Too Many Clues? | 28 |
Scars with a Difference | 36 |
The Unthinkable Heresy | 44 |
The Great Controversy | 52 |
The Revisionists | 59 |
Unusual Currents | 66 |
From Pend Oreille to Spokane | 112 |
Lake Lewis Basins | 132 |
Wallula Gap to The Dalles Lake Condon | 141 |
The Dalles to Portland The Columbia Gorge | 153 |
The PortlandVancouver Basin A Story of Erosion | 160 |
the Tualatin Valley West of Portland | 169 |
Ancient Cataclysmic Floods | 186 |
The Conclusion But Not the End | 192 |
Major Researchers Since Bretz | 76 |
THE LANDSCAPE BEFORE AND AFTER THE MISSOULA FLOODS | 87 |
Glacial Lake Missoula and the Purcell Trench IceDam | 104 |
ABOUT THE AUTHORS | 205 |
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Common terms and phrases
Astoria basalt boulders Butte canyon catastrophic flooding Channeled Scablands Cheney-Palouse Scabland Columbia Plateau Columbia River Gorge Crab Creek Crown Point cubic miles Dalles debris Dry Falls east eastern Washington elevation eroded erosion erratics field trip Figure filled flood crests flood deposits floodwaters flow formed geologists giant ripple Glacial Lake Columbia Glacial Lake Missoula glacier Grand Coulee gravel bars Hills Hodge hypothesis Ice Age Floods Ice Sheet ice-dam icebergs John Day John Eliot Allen Kalama Lake Allison Lake Condon Lake Lewis Lake Oswego landslide lava layers loess lower Missoula Floods Moses Coulee Mount St Mountain Ooligan Press paleosols Palouse Pardee Pasco Basin Pleistocene Portland Portland-Vancouver Basin potholes Quincy Basin rhythmites ridges rock sand Scott Burns scouring sea level silt slopes Snake River soil spillway Spokane Flood square miles stream Touchet Beds tributary Tualatin Uniformitarian varves Waitt Walla Walla Wallula Gap waterfalls Willamette Valley Yakima