Cataclysms on the Columbia: The Great Missoula Floods

by John Eliot Allen, Marjorie Burns, Scott Burns

Cataclysms on the Columbia tells two stories. One follows geological research that challenged the scientific paradigm of the early 20th century, and the other chronicles the result of that the discovery of powerful prehistoric floods that shaped the Pacific Northwest. The cataclysms at the end of the last Ice Age left a scabland of buttes, dry falls, and rocky gorges, but it took the detective work of geologist J Harlen Bretz to prove it to the world. His lifetime of research and unshakeable belief changed geology forever.

Genres: Science, Geology, History, Nonfiction, Geography, Nature

216 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 1986

About the author

California division of mines

Reviews

[Chrisl · Rating 4 out of 5]

9/9/19 - The recent science news about 15,000 year old evidence of human activity at Cooper's Ferry, Idaho again leads me to wonder what knowledge the earliest explorers of America had of the 'cataclysms'? ... Was there already a settled area, a regional hub, on the lower Columbia when the floods started?

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/cu...

quote from National Geographic article:

"The old age of Cooper's Ferry is another piece of proof that people were already south of the ice sheets that once covered North America before an ice-free corridor into the lower part of the continent opened up about 14,000 years ago. Davis and his colleagues think their findings offer support for a theory that's been gaining popularity among archaeologists: That the first people to see the American continents were seafarers who paddled to the Pacific Coast.

"The most parsimonious explanation we think is that people came down the Pacific Coast, and as they encountered the mouth of the Columbia River, they essentially found an off-ramp from this coastal migration and also found their first viable interior route to the areas that are south of the ice sheet," Davis says.

The western stemmed points found at Cooper's Ferry may be among the oldest found in the Americas, and they might be evidence that this tool-making technology developed before Clovis."

***

When imagining those 400 foot walls of water racing down the Columbia, over and over, 13-14,000 years ago, when humans were already living in the then lake district of south central Oregon, at the Paisley caves, I wonder how many recently arrived were killed by cataclysm?
Stone Age in the Great Basin

[jeremy · Rating 4 out of 5]

it is now generally agreed that between 15,000 and 18,000 years ago around 40 to 90 tremendous deluges of almost inconceivable force and dimension swept across large parts of the columbia river drainage. swollen by the floodwaters, the columbia grew to contain 10 times the flow of all the rivers in the world today and 60 times the flow of the amazon river. nearly 16,000 square miles were inundated to depths of hundreds of feet, the greatest documented floods known to have occurred in north america.

cataclysms on the columbia, written by john eliot allen, marjorie burns & scott burns, is a relentlessly fascinating account of the missoula floods — and geologist j harlen bretz, whose ideas proposing large-scale flooding to explain the eastern washington landscape were widely ridiculed by colleagues (until proven correct decades later). these ice age floods, almost unfathomable in scope, radically altered the geology of the pacific northwest. cataclysms offers a thorough history of the floods themselves and also detailed descriptions of their effects across localized areas spanning four states (montana, idaho, washington, oregon). with plenty of explanatory photographs, maps, and charts, the book is essential for understanding the region's geologic history.

appendix c, comparing the energies of different catastrophes is mind-boggling: the combined energy of the missoula floods (as measured in both tnt equivalence and ergs) is nearly twice as much as the asteroid that extinguished life 66 million years ago!

[Dan · Rating 2 out of 5]

The Missoula Floods of 12,000 years ago, and how they shaped the landscape of the Pacific Northwest, are truly astounding, fascinating. Read the first half of this book (which calls them the Bretz Floods rather than the Missoula Floods), for a clear, readable explanation of how the floods happened and how geologists came to understand them.
You can stop reading about halfway through, unless you relish page upon page of repetitive geologist's description of the measurements of the floods at dozens of locations along their path. Yeah, you can really stop reading about halfway through.

[KennyO · Rating 5 out of 5]

John Eliot Allen taught geology at Portland State University. In fact, he was the founder of the Department of Earth Science (later Geology Department) at the university. His career was such that an annual teaching award was named for him: The John Eliot Allen Outstanding Teaching Award.

I'm an admitted Ice Age Floods junkie. (N.B. The Ice Age Floods have also been called the Spokane Floods for the area where they were first evidenced, the Bretz Floods after the geologist who first hypothesized them and the Missoula Floods for the location of the natural reservoir.) My house near the Columbia River, had it existed at the time of the floods, would have been scrubbed out of existence by churning, tree-, ice-, mammoth- and rock-laden water 400-600 feet above our heads, moving at 50-60 MPH. Unimaginable! (Except to a certain J Harlan Bretz!) Allen describes the genesis of the series of floods in the Pacific Northwest at the end of the last ice age: a lobe of the Cordilleran ice sheet blocked what's now called the Clark Fork River around the Idaho-Montana state line and water backed up for years forming a natural reservoir up to 2000 feet deep. That ice dam broke abruptly, unleashing the greatest floods on the planet for which we have geologic evidence. Allen follows the progress of the water from (today's) Idaho, across/down eastern Washington to the Columbia River to the Pacific Ocean. The scablands of eastern WA give testimony to the power of the floods and the many waterfalls along the way to and in the Columbia River Gorge (including Palouse Falls and Multnomah Falls) are among their aftereffects.

Allen doesn't simply describe the floods, he explains what the geologic flood features are and how the reader can identify most of them for himself. You needn't be a geologist or student of geology either. It's enough to be an interested, educated tourist. Cataclysms leads you to the flood features and teaches you about them.

Need a sense of scale? It's been calculated from surveys that the volume of water flowing to the sea due to the cataclysmic breakup of the ice dam was as much as 500 cubic miles. That's roughly half the volume of Lake Michigan. The natural reservoir emptied in a few days and took a week or more to pass by any given point on its route. Had you been downstream as it came your way you'd have heard a low pitched rumble building rapidly for a half hour before you saw any sign of the coming disaster. Who needs Tom Clancy? This is a REAL thriller!

[Melissa · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a great complement to Bretz's Flood: The Remarkable Story of a Rebel Geologist and the World's Greatest Flood. It explains in more detail the geological formations in eastern Washington and includes helpful photographs. Now to go visit! I've hiked or driven through these areas many times and admired the unusual topography. It will be fun to go again with more informed vision!

[S. Wigget · Rating 4 out of 5]

In the early twentieth century, J. Harlen Bretz was a geologist who walked around what were believed to be glacial formations carved through mountains and valleys in the states of Oregon and Washington. He took detailed notes and observed rock patterns from Spokane to Portland, Oregon…and came to the conclusion that a huge prehistoric flood created the canyon called the Scablands. This was completely at odds with the beliefs of established geologists of the time, and he knew this, but he stood up for truth anyway. This book proves to be not only a scientific study but also a riveting drama.

[Thequaminator · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fun book to read since we are located right in the middle of this area. Would love to have the time to visit all of the sites talked about. I think that every one in WA, especially Eastern WA (or planning to visit) should at least skim through this book.
We have visited many of these sites and now I would really like to go again with fresh eyes.

The book stated that the Missoula floods are some of the most researched geological events in ancient history. While I believe that to be true, I still am skeptical at the high levels of confidence presented stating that we know exactly how an event played out thousands of years ago, by just looking at the shape and make up of the rocks. I know that all of these geologists are way smarter and have spent way more time than I and yet it still seems like recreating the events could so easily draw the wrong conclusions.

This is certainly explained in the first part of this book where it chronicles the story of Bretz and his persistence to change the theories of his day. He seems to have been an incredible boots on the ground researcher. As stated above, I think that everyone should read his story.

I read this book in conjunction with On the trail of the ice age floods by Bjornstad, which is more of a tour guide. It was helpful and fun to read the two together, and I highly recommend it.

[ELIZABETH · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book describes the Missoula Floods and Bretz, the man who first theorized that massive flooding was the driver of much of the geology along the Columbia, as well as eastern Washington and the Willamette Valley. The book is divided into two. The first section is about Bretz and the hostility with which the rest of the scientific community received his work. No one believed, or wanted to believe, what he knew to be true - that massive flooding, several orders of magnitude greater than anything ever before conceived of, was the only thing that could have caused the geological features in the region. That first section is really interesting, with all its scientific drama and back-stabbing! But the second half was not what I expected. I thought it would be a narrative about the floods themselves, accessible to a broad audience. But that's only very barely the case. There is some narrative, but much of it is presented in a very scientific way, at times, reading more like a results section of a journal article. The maps, figures and pictures are insufficient to give the reader a frame of reference for the places being discussed. So unless you're very familiar with the region, you'll be hard pressed to find anything very meaningful. The second half would be excellent as a supplemental field guide ... it would be great to have as a text in a field class. The chapters are divided into regions, and each discusses the geological features of that region that were created by the floods. But it's repetitive to just read through because it re-hashes the evidence so many times ... each chapter in this section can really be read independently. I skipped much of it and just read the Willamette Valley section, which was very interesting for me. And the last chapter about even more ancient flooding was incredibly interesting. There is a great story tucked in this book ... I just wish that it was drawn a little better for the lay audience. The more "field-guide" section could be kept as well, but I'd maybe tuck it at the end, after telling the story in a narrative way.

[Kento Ikeda · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Human error” is a great potential weakness to any epistemic system, and the development of science as an epistemic institution has in large part been an effort both to eliminate the actual causes of human error and the perception of fallibility. Of course, the former leads to the latter, if science makes fewer mistakes, there is less legitimate reason to be skeptical of it. But science’s ability to correct itself does not make it at any time flawless, the ability to eliminate human error over time does not mean human error is always corrected right away.

What’s interesting about Cataclysms on the Columbia to someone interested in the history of science is what it offers as a case study in a discipline struggling to correct itself. Misapplication of what are perceived to be geology’s theoretical underpinnings, classism, an inability to recognize the true scale of geologic features when represented on a map, and the crueler instincts that hide in each of us caused a theory with considerable explanatory power—that the Missoula Floods caused many geologic phenomena in the Pacific Northwest of the United States—to be marginalized

Perhaps even more interesting though is how it offers a case study in how scientific truth requires not just the elimination of human error, but the presence of human virtues—observation, bravery, persistence. Those views of science that try to purify it by the elimination of anything human end up missing something about the merits of science.

[Alison McCarter · Rating 4 out of 5]

As someone who is casually interested in geology and appreciative of the beautiful, varied landscape of the Pacific Northwest, I found Cataclysms on the Columbia to be a fascinating read. The first half of this book chronicles the life of geologist J Harlen Bretz—his study of the ancient catastrophic floods that shaped the landscape of the Pacific Northwest and his struggle to prove his theory to the scientific community. Bretz’s life and work make the first half of the book a more historical read (which I happened to enjoy), while the latter part transitions into the geologic effects of the floods on the landscape. There are also some interesting flood-related facts sprinkled throughout that kept me interested in this book. For example, a small section details the nutrients left behind by the floods, which created the conditions for Washington and Oregon to host the second and third most wineries respectively in the United States. Written in simple yet stimulating language, Cataclysms is an excellent read for those interested in scientific history or in geology

[Stephen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I got interested in the channeled scablands while camping at Sun Lakes below Dry Falls. This book filled the ticket. I really enjoyed the first section, where the authors speak of the geological investigation and conclusions made by Harlen Bretz. He was the first to propose that the scablands could only have formed through cataclysmic floods from glacial lake Missoula. He was generally dismissed, but prevailed as other geologists saw the evidence in the landscape.

I did not read every word, but every word I read satisfied my desire to know more.

[Judy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Written in 1986, this is worth the read just for the historic photos, maps and charts. The first half tells the story of J. Harlan Bretz, who first surmised the reality of what was later called the Missoula Floods. It took 50 years for the scientific community to agree with him. The second half describes how those floods (15,000 to 12,000 years ago) took place and what they left behind in Eastern Washington, along the Columbia Gorge and in the Willamette Valley.

[Luis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fascinating, both in the “this is how science evolves” detective + social story aspect (scientist sees puzzle, solves it, receives scorn from the establishment) and in trying to wrap your head around the geology of it (10x the Amazon! For days!)

Could be better written; most people probably better off just reading the Wikipedia article :)

[Leah · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've read through this one a number of times while working on it, and I love the way the voices mesh together. Geology is not my area of expertise, but the story truly is interesting on historical, scientific, and personal levels; it keeps the reader engaged that way and has a wide appeal.

[Janet · Rating 2 out of 5]

The first three parts of this book were interesting. The next three were more academic and hard to understand. The bottom line is, there were multiple cataclysmic floods that occurred towards the end of the last ice age.

[Rae · Rating 3 out of 5]

Needs a revamp. Good information, but exceptionally dry

[Margaret Harris · Rating 3 out of 5]

It is a fascinating story until it increasingly bogs down into statistical minutia of heights, depths, distances, gradients, volumes of water, and confusing directions. The authors detail what has only been intellectually determined within the past century about how an earthly ice age of two million years began to melt away about 15,000 to 12,000 years ago, causing temporary iceberg dams blocking a massive lake of melted waters to repeatedly break, thus flooding the Pacific Northwest land area of what is now the states of Montana, Idaho, Washington, and Oregon. The final big funnel into the Pacific Ocean was what is now the Columbia River.

It took decades, the authors say, for professional geologists to agree with the first hypothesist, J. Harlan Bretz, who theorized that great floods had caused vast acres in eastern Washington to become what he called “scablands,” “bare eroded basalt surfaces and dry falls” of flat land along plateaus above the Columbia River. But when doubters finally went out to do the field work, observations were made of miles-long even tiers of indentations in riverside embankments, the scabland prairies themselves and their “dry channels” and sometimes long empty chasms, airplane views of massive, evenly-rolling hills across many miles of landscape, and unexpected deposits of sand and/or gravel and some unexplained huge stones (later called “erratics”) lying isolated in fields or forests far away from the mountains that might have produced them. Eventually, it was conclusively deducted that not one, but repeated (as many as 40) massive floods flowed from Lake Missoula in Montana to the sea whenever the melting lake water overflowed and broke recurring ice dams that had held the water at an elevation of 4,200 feet above sea level—where now a small city exists on dry land 1,000 feet lower than the highest waterline that can yet be seen across the east hillside. The rushing water traveled as fast as 50 miles per hour, its volume was “500 cubic miles,” and it carried with each expulsion not only ice chunks, but gravel and massive rocks picked up along its way. It scoured holes and left some new lakes along the route, both large and small. It caused rivulets from the sides of mountains passed to become creeks and small rivers, all flowing toward the central Columbia, which carried the water westward into the ocean.

If a reader wishes to personally explore the story, the authors cite highway numbers and intersections where the prehistoric deposits and/or scouring can yet be observed.

[Pam Wells · Rating 3 out of 5]

You can’t live in Portland very long without hearing about the Missoula Floods. This was the massive geological process that originated in what is now Montana and carved out the Columbia Gorge thousands of years ago. It’s easy to marvel at the spectacular cliffs and waterfalls and let it go at that. But when I came across Cataclysms on the Columbia, I wanted to know more. My comments refer to the revised second edition, published in 2009 by Ooligan Press—a new book in geologic terms, anyway.

The writing isn’t stellar, but it’s clear and informative. The visual elements are not exactly compelling, consisting mostly of black-and-white portraits of stone-faced geologists, maps, and aerial shots of the landscape. There’s one small section of color photos, however, including a simulated photo of downtown Portland submerged in four hundred feet of water.

This is the level of flooding that occurred as floodwaters reached the Willamette Valley, and it happened many times over the 3,000-year period of the Missoula Floods. The cycle would begin with the formation of an ice dam in western Montana, thirty miles across and 2,500 feet high, followed by a build-up of water and debris, then a sudden breach in the ice dam which would empty Glacial Lake Missoula in three days. Water and icebergs surged their way from western Montana to the Pacific Ocean, leaving boulders and fertile silt in their path.

That’s the geologic drama of this book. The other drama is the human one. J Harlen Bretz, the geologist who in 1927 proposed the timeline and dynamic theory of the Missoula Floods as a 3,000-year series of catastrophic events, was nearly booed out of his profession. It took four decades before his work was accepted by the scientific community. The authors of this book explain how and why his ideas met with so much resistance. What keeps this book interesting to a layman is how Bretz, a scientist with a revolutionary idea, had to break the ice dam of conventional thinking.

I’d like to see a new edition of Cataclysms. In keeping with the idea to make geologic history accessible to general readers, an updated edition with a few new essays and fancy new graphics would keep it moving in that direction. And put a new photo of Portland under water on the cover, with whatever tall buildings have gone up in the last ten years. They’ll have arrived with the latest surge.

[Howard Frisk · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is one of the best books that I have ever read on the Missoula Floods that swept across eastern Washington between 16,000 to 11,000 years ago. The book details how geologists figured out how the deep coulees and rugged landscape of the Channeled Scablands were formed. More intriguing that this, however, is the story of battle that raged between geologists for decades about whether or not the Missoula Floods actually happened. On the one side was Harlan Bretz, who was the geologist that first proposed the idea of catastrophic floods in the 1920s, and on the other side were the members of the geologic establishment, who could just not wrap their heads around the idea of a flood that inundated hundreds of square miles and was up to 600 feet deep. This is a case where one man was right and everyone else was wrong.

This is a fascinating read.

[Barbpie · Rating 3 out of 5]

A little boring for me but I muscled through.

[Jim]

OK, but the authors mention books by Soenichsen and Alt that are much better. Have to mention that Tom Foley was not term limited, he lost a historic re-election bid.

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was happy to find a first addition of this book in Powells, signed by co-author Marjorie Burns.
That said, this review is of the first edition of the book, and I know that it's been updated since, though I'm not sure how extensive the changes have been.

Cataclysms begins with a classic story of a scientist (J Harlen Bretz) who was forced to confront the scientific theories of his day in order to paint an accurate portrait some of the Pacific Northwest's most stunning and perplexing physical features. I've always enjoyed tales of this sort, where a lone scientist saw the facts as they were in spite of overwhelming scientific consensus which claimed that they could not be so. Bretz's journey to prove that the eastern Washington and the Columbia Valley landscapes were carved by massive, cataclysmic floods was revolutionary for the man personally and for the scientific community as a whole, and the authors do an admirable job of recounting the story.

The second part of the book goes into more detail regarding the effects of the floods on specific terrains. This section I found less appealingly written, as it required a great deal of prior knowledge of the landscape, and skirted over many features upon which some elaboration was due. That said, I'm sure that the book will be a great reference in the future as I travel around the Pacific Northwest.

I'll have to glance at the latest editions of the book in order to see what's changed.

[Ryan Mishap · Rating 3 out of 5]

This new version updates the research on the Ice Age floods (the Missoula Floods) that helped shape and create the land along the Columbia River, from the scablands of eatern Washington to the Columbia River Gorge and even down the Willamette valley to Eugene.

I could have done without the new introductions to geology and geologists that read like over-wrought paeans to those stalwart mythic heroes--geologists--, but the drama of J Harlan Bretz and his decades long fight to have the flood theory recognized by the geology community is a good read. The science part of the book is the original text--updated with new discoveries--and also a little boring. Written for the layperson, the author still tends to employ geological terms with little or no definition (I am still not clear on what a "varve") but I got the picture. And what a picture! From 18,000 to 15,000 years ago, forty mega-floods poured across the land from glacial Lake Missoula--stories of water traveling at sixty miles an hour.

For the geology nerds and anyone curious about how the land came to be as it is.

[Wayne · Rating 4 out of 5]

We picked this book up at the gift shop at Multnomah Falls about 13 years ago and it has languished on my bookshelf ever since. I finally picked it up when I was looking for something to read and was pleasantly surprised by its readability.
Clear and well written for the layman. The first half of the book describes the challenge by a geologist named J. Harlen Bretz to convice the geology world that a catastrophic flood hundreds and, in some locations, thousands of feet deep swept across Montana, Idaho, Washington, and Oregon. The authors do a good job of explaining the geology and history that made this a tough story to believe for much of the academic world.
The second half of the book details the geology and explains the impacts on the land in more academic terms. A bit tougher to follow for a layman, but not too bad. The age of the book is a bit telling at this point with black and white photos and charts and graphs that look like they were put together in 1951 (and probably were).
All in all a very readable book and very interesting for the geologically minded.

[Bonnie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Found it to be very interesting since I live in the Columbia Basin area.

[David Shapiro · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a classic in the field of Missoula Flood studies. The new edition is great to have!

[Nicole · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting read for anyone interested in geology. I would recommend skipping Part 1; as a geologist, I found some of the statements in this section a bit offensive.

[Heather Wheeler · Rating 4 out of 5]

Makes drives and hikes through the gorge and other local places more interesting.