Geological Field Trip in Washington State

PRESS RELEASE                            June 2nd, 2000

TRAVELLERS THROUGH TIME - MISSOULA FLOOD TOUR

     Over fourteen thousand years ago, the last of many gigantic floods swept through
Eastern Washington, and down the Columbia Gorge to the Ocean. The surging,
two-thousand foot deep water traveling 75 miles an hour across Spokane, created whole
new landscapes across the Pacific Northwest..
     During the Ice Ages, a tongue of one of the great glaciers crept down the Purcell
Trench in Northern Idaho, damming the Clark Fork River. The glacial melt-water
backed up into Western Montana forming the huge Ice Age Lake Missoula. When the ice
dam broke, the 2000 foot wave sloshed across Eastern Washington, scouring and even
pulling up the bedrock, and left gigantic piles of gravel, ripple marks, boulders, and
spectacular, but now dry, waterfalls.
     The effects of this unparalleled flood was so spectacular, that Ice Age study members
are considering making the area a National Geological Region"...a Park Without
Boundaries," and are hoping congress and the National Park Service will help out. The
no-boundaries concept is due to the vast area covered, and that no private lands are to be
purchased, except for small parking areas and such. The group would like to construct
roadside signs along the route pointing out exceptional geological features, and add some
interpretive centers that visitors can enjoy along a pre-designated route. The area
markers would be similar to the present Oregon Trail or Lewis and Clark Trail signs
often seen.. The route is being developed by the Ice Age Floods Institute and the Ice Age
Floods Task Force. Several towns and cities will have educational sites with brochures
and information.
     The Geological Society of the Oregon Country in Portland, OR, is planning its annual
Presidents Field Trip over this route Sept. 2nd through the 9th. This historic bus tour
will be the first organized trip by a group over the newly designated route of our next
National Trailway, that is, assuming Congress approves it.

ROUTE
     The eight-day trip will leave Portland and pass through the Columbia Gorge. Dr.
Richard Waitt of the U.S. Geological Survey will be our tour bus guide as far as
Kennewick, and then into Moses Lake, WA.
     As early man was possibly witness to the giant flood, one of our first stops will be at
the site where Kennewick Mans bones were found, and our speaker will be the popular
Dr. J. Chatters (the first one to describe the Ancient One"). Also plans have been made
to meet a paleontologist to tell of mastodon fossils found in the area, and in conjunction
with the 2005 Lewis and Clark 200th anniversary, we have planned a stop at Sacajawea
State Park
Staying at various hotels for the duration of the trip, the next day we hope to take our
tour bus to the popular Palouse Falls, a trickle now compared to the raging Ice Age
floods. While in the area of the falls, we expect an anthropologist to point out the site of
Marmes Man, so the group will be able to, Walk In The Footsteps of Ancient Man."
     In Moses Lake Dr. Gene Kiver, will take us on a tour covering the area of Dry Falls
State Park, a once ancient cataract. Also to be seen are eroded pot-holes, giant bars of
gravel, scab-lands where soils have been carried away, and see the coulees, dry canyons
carved by the ancient torrents. Air flights touring over the spectacular area are planned
also, while those on the ground collect souvenir rocks.
     Talks on geology are planned each evening in hotel conference rooms, and
memorabilia will be awarded to sponsors and supporters. Dr. John Whitmer will join us
also in Moses Lake, and be the tour guide for the remainder of the trip.
     As we travel eastward, the tour will visit the area of the ancient North American
continents docking" with island terranes that literally built the west.," and there will
be a stop-over at Farragut State Park where we will get to see where the floods gouged
out basins after the failure of the glacier tongue on the Clark Fork River near
Sandpoint, ID. As we cross the mineral areas in the Rockies, we hope to explore some
mines and pick up some specimens.
     We'll view giant watermarks on the hills near Missoula, Mt., and then even possibly a
bison-burger cook-out before heading back towards Ellensburg, WA.
     A stop at the Vantage,WA, outwash of the Columbia River channel of the Missoula
floods will be combined with Native American rock pictographs and a state park
museum dedicated to petrified ginkgo wood.
     While in Ellensburg, time permitting, the Central Washington University has the
sign-language speaking chimpanzees that will be visited...a Chimposium, they call it.
     The final day, Sept. 9th, the bus will return to Portland, stopping at the Discovery
Center in The Dalles to visit their many important exhibits, including those of the
Missoula Floods..
     For more information please contact: Ray Crowe, Geol. Soc. Oreg Country President,
if youd like to come along; 503-640-6581, raycrowe@aol.com The 40 bus seats are
filling up rapidly with GSOC members.