The Tracks of Water. Lots of Water.

In 1926, J. Harlen Bretz, a Northwest geologist, posited during the most recent ice age, ten to fifteen thousand years ago, one or more great floods formed the unique Palouse country of Eastern Washington and carved the Columbia River Gorge.  Sixteen years earlier in 1910, unknown to Bretz, Joseph T. Pardee, another geologist, proposed an ice dam blocked the Clark Fork River in Montana creating a huge lake he named the Glacial Lake Missoula.  Initially, colleagues derided Bretz’s theory.  In 1940, Pardee published a paper detailing what he believed were giant ripple marks on the land covered by Lake Missoula.  Some fifty feet high and two hundred to five hundred feet apart, these ripples would be created only by massive and rapidly flowing current.  The sort of current created by the sudden emptying of Lake Missoula.  With further observation by geologists, it became clear taken together, the theories of Bretz and Pardee offered a natural and logical explanation for the creation of many distinctive geological features found west of Montana. 

Today, it is generally accepted Bretz’s Ice Age Floods carved the lands across Eastern Washington and cut the Columbia River Gorge.  Occurring as many as sixty-eight times by some accounts, each flood lasted only a few days and released ten times the annual water flow of all the world’s rivers today.  These floods stripped the rich soil from the eastern plains, Flowing into the Willamette Valley where, as a backwater, the current stopped and allowed the soil to settle out.  In places, this rich loam layer lies over three hundred feet deep.  “Erratic boulders”,  boulders of a rock type different from the immediate locale, have been found across the Northwest.  Geologists traced many of these erratics back to the “mother” bedrock in Montana and Idaho. 

In Stevenson, the effects of the flood are clear and dramatic. As you look at the Gorge walls, basalt layers from repeated lava flows were exposed by the cutting action of millions of cubic yards of water.  We have our own ripple. The island in the Columbia River just upstream  of Multnomah Falls is a remnant ripple of the massive flows.  The steep walls of the Columbia River Gorge are striped with waterfalls.  All these features are result of the Ice Age Floods some ten thousand years ago.

In recent years, a group of geologists and naturalists banded together to educate people about these great floods responsible for features across much of the Northwest.  As part of the continuing education project, they proposed an Ice Age Flood Trail, running from the ice dam on the Clark Fork to the Pacific Ocean.  With many scattered features, the proposed “trail” becomes more a web with a single starting point and a single finishing point.

This plan has been embraced by the Northwestern states and the National Park Service plans to administer the Ice Age Trail

Where the Ice Age Trail Stands Today

On September 25, 2006, the House of Representatives passed the Ice Age Flood Route bill.   On November 16, the Senate passed the Ice Age Flood Trail bill.  Both bills passed unanimously.  The difference in the bills lies in the title to the trail—being a “Trail” or a “Route” --and the Senate bill included $12 million to fund the first stage of development.  The bills are currently in conference committee to determine the final form.

For More Information:

Ice Age Floods Institute www.iafi.org

For information on the City of Stevenson and other events

www.cityofstevenson.com

1-800-989-9178

509-427-8911

info@cityofstevenson.com

Other Links:

www.skamania.com
www.cgriversidelodge.com
www.econolodge.com
www.skamania.org