Description

Glacial Lake Missoula and Its Humongous Floods
By David Alt
Mountain Press, 2001

As geologist J Harlen Bretz walked the dry scabland channels of eastern Washington in the 1920s, it dawned on him that he was viewing a landscape sculpted by water. Lots of water. A flood of catastrophic proportions. Glacial Lake Missoula and its Humongous Floods tells the gripping tale of a huge Ice Age lake that drained suddenly—not just once but repeatedly—and reshaped the landscape of the Northwest. The narrative follows the path of the floodwaters as they raged from western Montana across the Idaho Panhandle, then scoured through eastern Washington and down the Columbia Gorge to the Pacific Ocean. This is also the story of geologists grappling with scientific controversy—of how personalities, pride and prejudice sometimes supersede scientific evidence.