CATACLYSMS On The COLUMBIA

Layman’s guide to the Features, produced by the Catastrophic ‘Bretz’ Floods in the Pacific NW  J.E.Allen, M.Burns & S.C.Sargent,  Timber Pr.’ 86, ‘91-02; Portland, OR

This book is dedicated to J.Harlen Bretz a courageous geologist of Portland, OR, who discovered the Missoula floods, biggest flooding studied on earth, about 10K BC.  His research continued for years, being rejected by geology & publishing in science journals in controversy, sort of like ‘continental drift’ was for denied for decades. It took him decades to persuade geologists to accept the Flood caused the NW terrain.  HE was the first ‘catastrophist’ geologist when ‘uniformism of evolution strangles earth sciences in bias view, opposing the Noah’s flood & Moses exodus during cataclysms.  In ‘99 I saw a special report on Missoula flood on Oregon Trail Guides OPB TV show, documentary revealing what this book explains in details.

The Missoula flood came from Lake Missoula (an inland sea) in Montana & So. Canada, behind big ice-dam in Rocky Mtns.  It broke open releasing mountains of ice waters rushing across No. Idaho & NE Washington, creating the ‘scab lands’ there, taking vast soil sediment away toward the Pacific ocean.  He found strong geological (mystery) evidence in Columbia river gorge, around Portland, in Willamette valley & onto the Pacific, thru & besides current Columbia & Willamette rivers.  Many huge erratic boulders & up to 50 layers of sediments were found south of Portland, taken from central Wash. Area.  It also dug the channel of the Columbia dragging soil & rocks deposited far away, he traced it origins.  The giant flood cut channels, ravines, now ‘dry falls’,  gulches, & hollows for 100s of miles flowing to Pacific, dozens of times, as the ice-dam froze, then melted &or broke-open again over centuries after 10K BC.  A few valleys in NE WA & near Yakima were missed by the torrents, leaving fertile soil now growing vast fruit crops.  Still most earth sciences reject catastrophism as cause of local & global devastation & extinction effects, like rejecting the baby with the bathwater, Noah’s flood with Biblical God of 6 days of Creation.  What other cataclysms happened on earth when Missoula flood crashed & dashed down the Rockies & across lands taking  ice bergs, soil & erratic-boulders 100s miles. MS review