Chris, I hope you read this, since I am typing it a couple of days late. The Palouse hills were formed not by the waters of Lake Missoula, but rather of dust and sand that probably was part volcanic ash and part glacial till dust. The hills are, or were, actually more or less sand dunes that formed when this area was a whole lot dryer than it is now.
There was a lot more area covered by similar dust/sand hills than there is now, but when the ice dam(s) that held the water back in Glacial Lake Missoula broke loose, it released hundreds of cubic miles of flood water very quickly. Since the current Columbia River gorge was also blocked by glaciers, the flood water could not follow that path to the ocean. So the floods followed the paths of least resistance, and formed new channels. Probably the most impressive channel formed the Dry Falls, but there were also several other channels, including one that went nearly straight South from what is now Spokane, and another that went through the Connell area. The huge amounts of flood waters eroded away much of the soil in the channels, leaving rocky, almost canyonlike areas. These channels often have Palouse hills on either sides of them.
I live on property in Spokane County that obviously encountered a large amount of erosion, as it is very rocky. Yet only a half mile away, there is rich farmland with very deep soil and no rocks at all. As a child, I always wondered why our property would be so very rocky, yet only a little distance away, they were not rocky. Obviously, our property is in one of the "channels.
The areas of Eastern Washington that were washed by the various Lake Missoula Floods are called the "channeled scablands". From the air, it is very obvious that a WHOLE LOT of water carved the channels. But it took a bunch of thinking by the scientists to determine what must have happened to have caused that much destruction. The mystery was: where could that much water have come from?
Lots of the soil that was washed off of Eastern Washington was deposited in the Columbia Basin, and it is believed that the wonderful soil in the Willamette Valley in Oregon also was washed down the Columbia River and deposited when the floods backed up the Willamette River.
As you might have guessed, this topic is something that fascinates me, and I have studied everything I could find on it. I am quite sure that the floods did not create the Palouse Hills, but rather the floods reshaped some of the Palouse Hills and removed others, leaving the patterns of rocky areas seen today.
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Today's Featured Article - On the Road with Dave Gohl: Auction Musings - by Dave Gohl. I was thinking the other day about all the auctions I've been to in the last few years. There've been many. Some have been very good, some have been well, disappointing to say the least. But no matter how good or bad auctions may be, we always seem to stay until the item we've come for or are interested in is on the block. I've been to some auctions near and far. I think the furthest has been the Two Cylinder 7 in the Amana Colonies last year. Lots of stuff, lots of people. I've also atten
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