CREATION STORY

Before I write too much about Oregon I guess it wouldn't hurt to sort explain some of how Oregon ended up looking the way it does. A little at a time.

 Approximately 15,000 years ago a glacier formed an ice dam at the head of drainage of the Clark Fork river in what is now Idaho. At it's highest the ice dam was 2,000 feet high. The lake that formed backed up as far as where Missoula, Montana is now. That ice dam didn't form once. It didn't form twice. It may have formed up to forty times. And it failed, forty times. The best theory is that pressure from the lake forced the leakage at the base of the dam. As it "floated" the dam failed realeasing enough water to fill Lake Erie and Lake Ontario. 

The flood waters roared down the paths of least resistance tearing out topsoil, boulders, chunks of glacial ice. Down through what is now Washington along ancient river bed we call Grand Coulee now. At speeds of fifty to sixty miles an hour. water volumes that would put the Amazon to shame the flood forced the narrows near the Tri Cities in Washington. On the way it backed flodd waters back in Idaho again. 

The flood hit a narrows at Kalama Gap where the Columbia River enters the Coast Range of mountains. Some of the flood waters backed up into the Willamette River Valley. One of the reasons the valley is the home to farms, orchards and vineyards. Good thing Washington hasn't asked Oregon to return that topsoil. The part of Wshington it came from is now known at the Channelled Scablands. 

Shot is fron the Wickipedia article. View of Park Lake near Grand Coulee. Floods took the path of least resistance tearing out the soils leaving the basalt columns behind. Looks pretty grim doesn't it. To be honest large sections of Eastern Washington and Oregon almost qualify as deserts. If we get fifteen inches of rain in a year we're lucky. Usually more like ten. So far that's what we're looking at for this year. Didn't even have much snow last winter and what we got was powder. Great for skiing. Not great for water content. When the waters slowed down and backed into the Willamette Valley they left some travelers behind. 

The rocks that don't belong where they landed and are composed of rocks hundreds of miles from the Willamette Valley are called erratics. Intersting name. This shot gives you an idea of the size of a several tons of the Rocky Mountains. It was probably attached to a huge chunk of glacial ice that was carried in the flood and finally came to rest in what is now Oregon. The Yamhill Valley south of Portalnd is visible in the background. 

And finally what Oregon pretty much looks like now. The green is the flat lands. Not very much is there. The mountan complexes include the Cascades, the coast ranges and the Blues. And the Blue Mountains really are blue. At least part of them

Pretty isn't it? What isn't mountains is high plateau east of the Cascades. It's high, it's dry. And the further south and east you get the lower the population. By size Oregon is ninth in the nation. By population we're more like twenty fourth with about 4.3 million people. Almost half the people in the state live in the Portland Metro Area. Oh, and the highest peaks in the Cascades? They are either extinct deeply eroded volcanoes. Or not so eroded and may just be dormant volcanoes. Mt. Hood near Portland erupted within the last two hundred yeas or or so Just across the river is Mt St. Helen's. She blew her stack back in the eighties. Oregon is a beautiful state. But respect her and don't take anything for granted once you leave the freeway.