Fire, Faults & Floods: A Road & Trail Guide
Exploring the Origins of the Columbia River Basin

By Marge and Ted Mueller

University of Idaho Press, Moscow, Idaho, 1997, 288 pages, 95 photos, 80 maps and illus.

Excerpts from a published review:

This book is a fine choice for anyone interested in learning more about the geologic features of the Columbia Basin. The book presents the story of the Columbia River Basalt Group and the Spokane (Lake Missoula or Bretz) floods. Although it is designed as a field trip guidebook, it serves well as a basic text.

Each chapter begins with a brief description of the field trips and a map showing all of the trip routes and major topographic and cultural features. Each field trip can be run easily in a few hours. Neighboring field trips can be run consecutively if more time is available. Thorough driving instructions and good road maps help make this easy.

Each field trip begins with a few bulleted sentences that tell what geologic features are to be seen on the trip. Then the authors list tourist facilities in the area and give a drive overview. They present the field trip as smoothly flowing text with illustrations. Maps, photographs, drawings, and copious geographic references in the text make the reader completely comfortable with regard to spatial context. The format is evidence of the careful planning of this book, and is probably the prime reason it is such fun to read. The bibliography is thorough and complete.

Fire, Faults & Floods is thoroughly and accurately researched, carefully organized, written for the nongeologist but also fun for the geologist, filled with beautiful illustrations (the only thing to wish for is color) and very well edited. This book will make a great addition to the library of anyone who is interested in the natural history of the Pacific Northwest, and it will make you long to take the field trips.

–J. Eric Schuster, Washington Dept. of Natural Resources, Div. of Geology and Earth Resources, in Washington Geology, v. 26, no. 1, p. 46, 1998

NOTE: This title is available from the IAFI Mail-Order Store.

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Glacial Lake Missoula and Its Humongous Floods

By David Alt

Mountain Press, 2001. 208 pages, paper, 58 two-color maps and illustrations, 45 b/w photographs.

IAFI member reviews:

Author David Alt is a geology professor at the University of Montana. The first half of the book documents glacial Lake Missoula, and provides the most complete coverage of the lake that I've seen in the popular paperbacks about the floods. Alt then traces the routes of the floods across northern Idaho, the Columbia Plateau and down the Columbia River, including the Willamette Valley, to the Pacific Ocean in the second half of this book. The only negative that I find is that many of the maps lack detail. It is an understandable and fun read and certainly worth the $15 list price.

–Gary Kleinknecht

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This book would be useful for anyone with an interest in the natural history of the ice-age Missoula floods. The book is well written for the layman, with which the author has proven skill and success via a number of contributions to the popular "Roadside Geology" series, produced by the same publisher. The book is organized in a chronological progression of 30 vignettes starting with the lake itself and ending at the Pacific Ocean. Disappointingly absent is any mention of flood features off the continental shelf, which have recently come to light (e.g., Zuffa et al., J. Geology, v. 108). It is here where most of the thousands of cubic kilometers of flood-scoured soil and rock finally came to rest. The author's intimate knowledge and over 30 years experience with glacial Lake Missoula, of which the first half of the book is devoted, is well expressed.

However, some of the names and accounts of flood features along the Channeled Scabland and the Pasco Basin are inaccurate and misleading in their interpretation. For the wealth of geologic literature published in these regions indicates that details on the mechanics and frequency of flooding are still open to debate. To the author's credit, he alerts us to the fact that too many flood features are succumbing to development, and those that remain should be protected and preserved.

The author also does an admirable job acknowledging the existence and importance of the many pre-Wisconsin flood episodes that preceded the more renowned last-glacial floods. And finally, Alt points out man's myopic view of climate change; despite our immediate anthropocentric fears of global warming, a return to glaciation and renewed flooding is inevitable.

–Bruce Bjornstad

NOTE: This title is available from the IAFI Mail-Order Store.

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Cataclysms on the Columbia

By John Eliot Allen and Marjorie Burns with Sam Sargent

Timber Press, Portland, Oregon, 1986 (reprinted 1991). 211p with illustrations.

IAFI member review:

This is the best book (Ok, the only book) I have found that has a thorough account of the scientific debate that resulted in the eventual acceptance of the theory of Pleistocene flooding in the Pacific Northwest. Bretz and all of his tribulations are laid out for the reader. It has reasonable graphics and photos, though more recent books may do better in that regard. This is a good layman's guide.
–Ivar Husa