EVIDENCES OF A FLOOD

by Gerald Durr

       As I travel from place to place in Franklin County, I often marvel at the variety of geological features I see: deep canyons and coulees, gravel mounds, a beautiful waterfall, basalt rock outcroppings, river valleys, and flat, fertile farmlands. These interesting and sometimes unusual features have raised questions in my mind. I like to ask, "How did that rock get there?" or, "What kind of force made that valley with such steep sides?" These questions have led me to investigate the geology of Franklin County.
       In this report, I would like to describe some of the unusual features found in Franklin County, look at the currently accepted theory of their origins, and then briefly evaluate that geological theory in light of the evidence available.
       My interest in the local geology was first aroused when traveling in the area around Connell, Washington. I lived in Connell for five years, so I became very familiar with the landscape in that area. Thus we will begin our study in Connell.

       The Coulees. Whether approaching Connell from the north, south, east, or west, it is necessary to descend a long slope. All of the surrounding land is at 1000 to 1100 feet elevation,³ but Connell lies in the bottom of a gully at 850 to 900 feet. This gully is the intersection of three coulees - Providence Coulee to the north, Washtucna Coulee to the east, and Esquatzel Coulee to the south.⁴ Providence Coulee is deep and narrow, with V-shaped, hilly sides. Washtucna Coulee is deep and about a mile wide, with grassy rangeland at the bottom and steeply sloping, somewhat rounded basalt cliffs at the sides. Esquatzel Coulee is very deep, with bare basalt cliffs at the sides.
       Providence Coulee has a small stream at the bottom. It flows through the middle of Connell, enters Esquatzel Coulee to the south, and continues on until it reaches Pasco. This small stream is a home for cattails and frogs. Farther down the coulee, it provides water for grazing cattle. Just before reaching Pasco, the water is drawn off into the Esquatzel Diversion Channel and carried to the Columbia River. The coulee itself loses its impressive basalt walls when it reaches Eltopia, then becomes just a small gully until the land around it flattens out into a plain just north of the Pasco Airport.
       Highway 260 runs along the southern lip of Washtucna Coulee on its way to Kahlotus. This widest of the three coulees doesn't have a stream running in it, but it does have two lakes that are gradually drying out, called Sulphur Lake and Lake Kahlotus. Lake Kahlotus is 865 feet above sea level. I've spoken to residents of Kahlotus who said that Lake Kahlotus has shrunk in the past 30 years. It once was a good fishing spot, but now it hardly has enough water for a fish to live in. At first I asked, "Where did all the water go?" But then, upon further thought, I had to ask, "Where did the water come from in the first place?" There is no apparent stream or other source.
 

       Gravel Bars. Also found in Washtucna Coulee are several very large gravel bars.⁵ Some of these have ripple marks along their tops. How did that gravel get there?
 

       Devil's Canyon. Just south of Kahlotus, Highway 263 enters Devil's Canyon. This is a steep-sided, V-shaped canyon that descends 400 feet in four miles. Its sides are made of basalt rock, with much talus, or broken rock, covering the slopes. Devil's Canyon ends at the Snake River. The Snake River above Lower Monumental Dam has an elevation of 540 feet.
       As I drove down the canyon one day, I wondered if it could have been made by running water. The problem is, there was no apparent source of water. From Kahlotus, elevation 865 feet, the road climbs to 1000 feet before descending into Devil's Canyon. That means that the canyon has a barrier at its upper end. How could the water rise 135 feet in order to enter the canyon?
       You may have noticed that we just moved from a coulee to a canyon. Actually, both words mean the same thing. When the French-Canadian fur traders were exploring the Columbia Basin, they noticed that there were many dry gullies with steep sides. They called these gullies "coulees," and the French name became commonly used in Eastern Washington. "Canyon," on the other hand, is a Spanish word meaning "a narrow chasm with steep cliff walls, formed by running water; a gorge."⁶ This word became a familiar word in the English language because of the many canyons in our nation's Southwest, where Spanish missionaries and Mexican settlers named the geographic features.
       Although "canyon" and "coulee" mean almost the same thing, there are some very noticeable differences between Devil's Canyon and Washtucna Coulee. Devil's Canyon is V-shaped, and the canyon floor descends rapidly (roughly 100 feet per mile). Washtucna Coulee is box-shaped, with vertical sides and flat bottom. It descends only about 200 feet in 32 miles (roughly 6 feet per mile).
       Let's continue heading northeastward from Kahlotus up Washtucna Coulee. Eventually we would reach Washtucna, at the upper end of the coulee. There the elevation is 1014 feet. But Washtucna is about a mile north of the Franklin County border, so we won't discuss it in this report. I would, however, like to describe another fascinating geological feature near that town.

       Palouse Falls. If we were to turn east onto Highway 26 at Washtucna, we would soon be driving alongside the Palouse River. The Palouse River flows out of Idaho, passes through the towns of Palouse and Colfax, and meanders through the Palouse Hills. It forms a part of the border between Whitman and Adams Counties. Then, about 3½ miles east of Washtucna, at the very eastern border of Franklin County, this lazy, meandering river makes a sharp turn southward and flows in a straight line over rapids and falls for four miles. Then it makes a 185-foot plunge over Palouse Falls.⁷ Here the basalt walls are vertical cliffs. You can clearly see the various layers of basalt, with their colonnades and entablatures.
       When I see a sudden change in the earth's features, I like to ask why. Why did a lazy, meandering river suddenly become a rushing rapids flowing as straight as a stick for four miles? And what made that river suddenly fall 185 feet, then again meander calmly down to the Snake River?
       The basalt cliffs near Palouse Falls have a curious tendency to make sharp, 90° turns.⁸ There is a deep canyon that cuts a perpendicular line across the river gorge just south of the falls.⁹ What geologic force has cut those canyons so straight and at such remarkable angles?

       Ringold Basin. About 18 miles to the southwest of Connell is the town of Basin City. Basin City is located in Ringold Basin - a U-shaped depression with steep slopes on both sides. These steep hillsides are over 100 feet high and covered with desert vegetation. In places the hillside is breaking off and sliding away. The slopes begin about 5 miles south of Othello and run southward past Basin City to Ringold and the Columbia River, a distance of about 15 miles. The slopes make me think of a dike alongside a river. But the only water in sight is a small stream.
 

       The Erratics. Basin City is built on gravel beds. Local farmers sometimes find huge boulders in their fields - not just the basalt rock that we would expect in this area, but granite and metamorphic rock as well. These unusual rocks must have come from far away in the mountains. Geologists can trace them to their source in the Okanogan Highlands or even the Rocky Mountains. Since these rocks are out of place here in the Pasco Basin, they are called erratics. How did such large boulders move here from so far away?
      

The Upland Flats.

Now let's look at some rather unremarkable features in Franklin County. It took me years to notice them, because they seem so ordinary. These are the upland "flats." We will begin in Pasco and travel northward.
       When you turn north off of I-82 onto Road 68, the road is straight and level for 2½ miles. Where the road forks at Douglas Fruits, you veer off to the right onto Taylor Flats Road. For 2½ more miles, the road winds back and forth, passing through some undisturbed sagebrush and undulating, wavy hills. For the next 4 miles, the road goes gently up and down, crossing hills and gullies and slowly rising in elevation. Between Sagemoor Road and Cypress Drive, the road climbs steeply.
       Finally, at the top of the hill, the land flattens out. At night I can see headlights appear two miles away and know that a car has just passed Elm Road. The road is flat and straight for those two miles, not varying more than 20 feet in elevation. But beyond the small hump at Elm Road, the "flats" go on for another four miles, until Taylor Flats Road ends at Eltopia-Ringold Road. These upland flats are not the Taylor Flats, which are found alongside the Columbia River, but I call them the "flats" because of their similarity to the Paradise Flats between Connell and Othello.
       You may be asking, "What is so unusual about a flat area?" At first I saw nothing unusual about this area, until I began to see others like it. The Taylor Flats plateau has an elevation of almost exactly 900 feet. When you drive on Highway 395 northeastward toward Mesa, you will see that Mesa is at the bottom of Esquatzel Coulee. Its elevation is 675 feet. But up above Mesa are steep hillsides. If you look around the horizon, you will see that the land above Mesa flattens out into a plateau. Its elevation is 930 feet.
       Continuing farther to the northeast on Highway 395, we come again to Connell. The road to Connell is lined with basalt outcroppings and deep gullies. If you look through the gullies toward the west, you can see that they empty into the Esquatzel Coulee. The far walls of the coulee are visible from the road in some places, but the floor of the coulee is far below and out of sight. (The walls are roughly 200 feet high.) It seems that these gullies must be washouts, draining the water from the nearby fields into the Coulee. But there is no water in sight. The gullies are dry. This is an example of channeled scablands.
       As you approach Connell, you can actually see the town from several miles away. There is a flat spot on Highway 395, and it lines up with Esquatzel Coulee so that you can see Connell down in its gully.
       I have noticed an unusual feature in the topography of Connell - there are two "shelves." Above the floor of the coulee, there is a hill, and then a shelf. Connell High School sits on this shelf. Its elevation is 900 feet - the same elevation as the "flats" above Pasco. Then there is another hillside above the high school, so steep that nothing is built or grown on it. Above this upper hillside, the land flattens out, and once again, the horizon looks flat. This area is at approximately 1000-1100 feet and is called Paradise Flats.¹⁰
       It seems that the land levels out above Connell on each side. Across Esquatzel Coulee to the west, the land looks to be the same elevation as Paradise Flats to the north. Across Washtucna Coulee to the northeast, it seems to be flat and on the same level as Paradise Flats. There seems to be a pattern here - and again I must ask, "Why?"

III. THE GEOLOGISTS EXPLAIN

       Let's look at what the geologists say. "In a sense, geologists are much like detectives: Although they were not present when an event occurred, they must collect and piece together physical evidence and must fit this evidence into a logical and 'most likely' scenario of what occurred at the scene. They must then convince their peers that their theory is the most believable one among several possibly conflicting theories."¹¹

       The Bretz Floods. A geologist named J. Harlen Bretz explored the dry coulees of Eastern Washington beginning in 1919. As he wondered at the geological marvels of Dry Falls, Grand Coulee, and the Potholes, it seemed to him that these features had to have been made by enormous volumes of water flowing across the land in the distant past.¹² Although at first he didn't know where the water could have come from, he published a scientific paper in which he proposed his theory of widespread flooding in the Columbia Basin. Other geologists did not immediately accept his theory, but Bretz continued his explorations throughout the next several decades, gradually accumulating enough data to convince the scientific community that his theory was accurate.

       Lake Missoula. It remained for other geologists to find the source of the waters that caused the flooding and devastation in the Columbia Basin. The current theory is that a lobe of glacial ice blocked the flow of the Clark Fork River in western Montana about 12,000 years ago. The dammed-up river then filled all of the valleys behind it to a depth of 2,000 feet.¹³ This vast reservoir of water, named Lake Missoula by the geology "detectives," then suddenly broke through the ice dam and emptied out within a matter of days. Such a tremendous release of water had a devastating effect downstream on the landscape of Idaho and Eastern Washington. It scoured away the topsoil and then carved deep channels into the bedrock. The deluge eventually drained away down the Columbia River to the Pacific Ocean. Geologist Bretz coined the term "channeled scablands" to describe this flood-scoured landscape.

       Basalt Rock Features. And how did the water cut through solid rock? Much of Eastern Washington is underlain by extensive basalt flows - volcanic lava that spilled out of fissures of the earth in the distant past and flowed like syrup to fill the Columbia Basin. When basalt lava cools, it hardens and cracks into a column-shaped rock. The many cracks form a natural weakness in the rock structure. When rapidly moving water flows in abundance over these rocks, the water actually separates the rocks at their weakest points and lifts them into its stream. When the loosened rocks are propelled in the current, they can become a battering ram capable of smashing other rocks apart.

       Flood Velocities. The Ice Age Floods are estimated to have had velocities in some places of as much as 75 feet per second (50 miles per hour). "If the velocity of a stream is doubled, its ability to move material along the bottom increases up to 64 times."¹⁴ Geologists estimate that the glacial floodwaters reached a height of 1000 feet above the rock surface in some places. This volume and velocity of water could move huge boulders for hundreds of miles.
       Geologists believe that the waters of Lake Missoula divided into several channels. One of these channels flowed southward from Cheney toward Pasco, crossing over Palouse Falls and eventually reaching the Snake River. They believe that Washtucna Coulee was once the channel of the Palouse River, flowing from east to west. But when the glacial floods flowed southward across the area, they cut a new channel for the Palouse River, a shortcut to the Snake River. This forever altered the course of the Palouse. That's why the Palouse River turns suddenly southward near Washtucna and flows over Palouse Falls on its way to the Snake River.
A smaller channel of the glacial floods flowed south-southwest through Providence Coulee. There it met the Palouse River at Connell and flowed down Esquatzel Coulee to Pasco.

       Overflow Channels. During the height of the flood, Washtucna Coulee was filled to overflowing. There was so much water that it spilled over the top at Kahlotus and ran rapidly down the slope to the Snake River, forming Devil's Canyon. This overflow, however, didn't cut all the way through the rock at the side of Washtucna Coulee, so the entrance to Devil's Canyon is still approximately 135 feet above the floor of the coulee.
A much larger flow of glacial waters made its way south past Othello, scooped out the Ringold Basin, and joined the waters of the Columbia. It left huge gravel deposits at Basin City and the Ringold area.

IV. EVALUATION OF THE FLOOD THEORY

       The evidence of a flood is irrefutable. Dry coulees, huge gravel bars, giant ripple marks, and erratic boulders all point to enormous volumes of water flowing at great speeds. But I have a few unanswered questions that beg for an answer. The main question I will deal with in this report is "What created the flatlands?"

       The Flatlands Question. The coulees were formed by the raging floodwaters of Lake Missoula. The floods washed out Ringold Basin. Many gullies visible above the Columbia River were formed by water drainage off the plateau farmlands. There's a pattern here - running water causes gullies and depressions.

       Geologists say that the Palouse Hills to the east of Franklin County are rolling hills made of "loess." Loess is wind-blown silt. The Juniper Dunes northeast of Pasco are sand dunes, caused by the gradual movement of wind-blown sand.¹⁵ There's a pattern here, too - when the landscape is dominated by wind-blown materials, it is hilly.

       But what causes flatlands? Is it reasonable to assume that they were "caused" by a geological force, just as the hills and the gullies were caused by known forces?
       Although I haven't found any explanation written by a geologist, I think I can guess what causes flatlands. It appears to me that the upper flatlands have some of the best, most fertile soil. It seems that moving air or water doesn't flatten the land, but tends to "rough up" the land. The silty soil that is so common in the Pasco area is easily moved by running water. Ripple marks, whether on the beach or in the gravels of Washtucna Coulee, are made by running water. Therefore, I would guess that the flatlands were formed by sediments settling out of calm waters.
       Immediately, my hypothesis raises a big question. There are flatlands at 900 feet elevation just 14 miles north of Pasco. Across Ringold Basin, about 20 miles north of Pasco, there are flatlands on the Wahluke Slope, also at 900 feet elevation. Above Mesa there are flatlands at 930 feet elevation. Above Connell, 35 miles northeast of Pasco, there are flatlands at 1000 to 1100 feet elevation. All of these areas are separated by coulees and basins said to be cut out by the Missoula Floods. If this is true, then all of the areas I've mentioned must have been connected before the floods. That's a huge amount of real estate, very flat, gently sloping from north to south, and all at 900 to 1100 feet of elevation. Could there have been a body of water big enough to cover that extensive area? The geologists say yes.
 

       Lake Lewis. About 12 miles south of Pasco, the Columbia River flows through a narrow gap in the Horse Heaven Hills. This opening is called Wallula Gap. The geologists say that during the Ice Age Floods, the floodwaters reached the Horse Heaven Hills and began to back up behind Wallula Gap, because the water couldn't drain through the gap quickly enough. They say that a temporary lake, called Lake Lewis, was formed as the waters backed up and then drained through the constriction. Lake Lewis was supposed to have risen up to 1250 feet elevation at the peak of the floods, and then drained out within a week or two.¹⁶
       That sounds like a lot of moving water. On the beach, when a gently flowing stream or a wave washes across the sand, it leaves ripples. There are no ripples on the upland "flats" I've mentioned. How could the waters of the Ice Age Floods have overflowed these flat areas and left them still flat? It seems to me that a vast, high, calm lake must have made the "flats".
       I attended a geology lecture and field at Columbia Basin College in Pasco, Washington. The lecturer, a geologist at Battelle Pacific Northwest National Laboratories in Richland, Washington, made some interesting comments. After explaining a geologist's interpretation of the Columbia Basin's natural features, he asked the students, "Do you believe that?" I think he was inviting us to question the geological detective work. He also told us at the end of the lecture, "In ten years, they'll teach all of this different." When a geologist "reads the rocks" and "pieces together the evidence," he or she forms a hypothesis to explain the evidence. Sometimes the pieces don't all fit together. Sometimes there are questions left unanswered.

V. CONCLUSIONS