Geographia: An Ancient Blueprint for Mapmaking
Many of history’s major breakthroughs were made by great thinkers standing on the shoulders of other intellectual giants, and Ptolemy’s Geographia, which builds on the scientific advancements of ancient Greek scholars, is no exception. The ancient Greeks were particularly skilled at understanding the world around them. By the fifth century BCE, the famous mathematician Pythagoras understood that the Earth was round, and it wasn’t long before Eratosthenes, another Greek scholar, accurately calculated the planet’s circumference. Centuries later, the Egyptian Greek scholar Ptolemy channeled all these scientific advancements into his masterwork, a collection of maps known as Geographia. Created around the year 150 CE, the eight-volume atlas served as a blueprint for mapmaking during the time of the Roman Empire. Ptolemy detailed the process of projecting a globe-shaped object onto a two-dimensional map, and pinpointed some 8,000 locations throughout Eurasia and northern Africa. He borrowed the concept of longitude and latitude from his mapmaking contemporary Marinus of Tyre, and built on it to make his own lasting contributions to cartography. Ptolemy’s work fueled many of the maps to come during the Islamic Golden Age and Europe’s Renaissance era. Reprinted from HistoryFacts.com article
The Bretz Journals and Google Earth
If you have been following Professor Nick Zentner (CWU) on YouTube, you may know that one of the treasures he has uncovered with the help of collaborators are the Bretz journals from field research done from 1919 through 1929. After Bretz’s death in 1981, his family donated his papers to the University of Chicago Library and though they were available to the public, access was very limited. Just recently Professor Zentner was able to obtain whole-hearted permission from Bretz’s family to share them more widely. Because of this, scans have been made of the journals and PDF’s are now available on Nick’s website for viewing and downloading. In November, 2023 Nick began a new series called “Ice Age Floods A to Z.” (The videos are recorded and can be viewed on YouTube.) During session I, Nick invited viewer Glenn Cruickshank (Liberty Lake, WA) to share about how to use Google Earth to view the travels of J Harlen Bretz based on his field journals. Glenn had the idea that he could transfer Bretz journal locations to Google Earth; in doing so he has created files for each of the Bretz’s years in the Northwest! All of Glenn’s work has been linked on Nick Zentner’s website. Using Google Earth with Glenn’s files, a marker appears on the map for each location that Bretz visited during a particular year and includes a snippet of his notes. The map points are all identified by year and by journal page. Not only can you zoom into the satellite images, but you can also use the ‘Street View’ feature to see various outcrops along roads that still exist today. Google Earth is a free program and can be used on the web, or as an app you can download for a mobile phone, tablet, or your computer (PC, Mac, or Linux). It is similar to Google Maps, but with many more capabilities. If you are just getting started with it, you may want to check out one of the many beginner tutorials on YouTube. Glenn has included step by step instructions on how to load the Bretz Files into Google Earth from Nick’s site. Using the journals and Glenn’s Google Earth files, you can follow along with Bretz’s field travels year by year.
Ice Age Floods A to Z Series
Ice Age Floods A to Z by Nick Zentner Our good friend Professor Nick Zentner (Central Washington University) recently started a new series on his YouTube channel called ICE AGE FLOODS A-Z. It is being live-streamed Thursday at 12:00 pm and every Sunday at 9:00 am Pacific Time. The series is also being recorded so that it can be watched anytime. Sessions A-H (streamed and recorded in November and December) have set the stage leading up to the time of J Harlen Bretz, covering Bretz’s predecessors and mentors (Israel C. Russell, Bailey Willis) and some of Bretz’s journey from starting out as a biology major and later becoming a geologist, and the chance meeting that propelled him to come to the Northwest. Special guests have included Jerome Lesemann, Skye Cooley, Joel Gombiner, and Glenn Cruickshank.
Journey Through Time: Explore Drumheller Channels
Nestled in the heart of Washington state, the Drumheller Channels offer a unique glimpse into earth’s history, carved by the immense power of Ice Age Floods. This National Natural Landmark is a must-visit for anyone seeking breathtaking landscapes, remarkable geological formations, and a chance to understand the power of nature. Witness the Scars of Ancient Floods: Drumheller Channels are a remarkable example of the Channeled Scablands, a vast landscape sculpted by cataclysmic floods that roared across the region millennia ago. Hike or bike through dry riverbeds, past towering basalt cliffs, and over rolling hills, all remnants of these powerful events. Imagining the colossal force of water that once flowed through these channels is an awe-inspiring experience. Explore Diverse Landscapes: The Channels offer a variety of landscapes, each offering its own unique charm. Hike along the McManamon Trail for panoramic vistas of the Scablands, or venture into the Crab Creek Unit to discover hidden waterfalls and basalt columns. For a unique perspective, climb to the top of “Nick’s Columns” and marvel at the vastness of the Channeled Scablands. A Haven for Wildlife: The diverse ecosystem within the Drumheller Channels provides a sanctuary for various wildlife species. Birdwatchers can spot over 23 species of ducks and geese, while sharp-eyed visitors may catch a glimpse of deer, coyotes, and even bald eagles. The Channels are also a vital nesting ground for many birds, making it a crucial habitat for preserving regional biodiversity. Connect with the Past: Explore the fascinating human history of the Drumheller Channels. The region has been inhabited for thousands of years, with evidence of Native American presence found throughout the area. Learn about the early settlers who braved the rugged landscape and contributed to the development of the region. A Place for Recreation and Reflection: Whether you’re an avid hiker, a passionate photographer, or simply seeking a peaceful escape, Drumheller Channels has something for everyone. Hike through scenic trails, enjoy a picnic amidst the breathtaking scenery, or simply relax and soak in the tranquility of nature. Plan Your Visit: The Drumheller Channels are open year-round and offer free access. Several trailheads provide easy access to various sections of the Channels. The Ice Age Floods Institute offers valuable resources, including maps, trail descriptions, and educational information. Be sure to pack sturdy shoes, appropriate clothing for the weather, and plenty of water for your adventure. Come experience the grandeur and wonder of the Drumheller Channels. Witness the power of nature etched into the landscape, explore the diverse ecosystem, and connect with the rich history of this remarkable place. It’s a journey through time that will leave you with a lasting sense of awe and appreciation for the natural world.
Recording of Erratics’ October 10 program, “Reading the Okanogan Lobe Glacial Landscape”
Because of problems with the Zoom broadcast of the Erratics’ October 10th program, Ralph Dawes graciously recorded for us his talk, “Glaciated landscapes that formed beneath the Okanogan Lobe of the Cordilleran Ice Sheet,” so that we could all enjoy it. Or re-enjoy it. He talks through the slide show, with all the illustrations showing up clear and supportive. The video software lets you view the slides full size, or the slides plus a table of contents at the side, if you click in the right places.You can watch at 1.5x speed by clicking on the gear icon lower right, if you want to hurry along to topics of interest (that appear in the side bar). You can also pause the video to study individual figures. The recording is hosted on a server Wenatchee Valley College provides for faculty to store teaching videos that are retained for the foreseeable future. The video is set to be open to anybody, no password needed. https://wvc.hosted.panopto.com/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=5105f23e-e869-4909-b7b8-b0b10002f143 Here is also a link to the YouTube version: https://youtu.be/1A2hkmxTDdo
Lyle Cherry Orchard Interpretive Panels Installed
Last week, Friends of the Columbia Gorge completed installation on their first-ever interpretive trail signs at the Lyle Cherry Orchard Preserve! They’ll be sharing MUCH more on this story in spring 2024 (including guided outings!), but if you’re intrepid enough to hike this trail during the winter, check out the brand new signage with QR-code links to learn more about the preserve and the Gorge. Stay tuned for more in the coming months. And check out the Ice Age Floods geology recording.
An Old Timer (Jeff Silkwood) IAFI Story
In the early days, the IAFI and National Geologic Trail were mainly good intentions and lacking in ways to communicate how enormous and special this landscape was. Jim Shelden, then Regional Geologist for Region One of the US Forest Service in Montana and now president of the Missoula chapter of IAFI, realized a good map was necessary to galvanize action on the project and legitimize the new group Jim Shelden had just hired Jeff Silkwood in an open-ended position as a Stay in School Cartographer and Database person in 1995. Jeff had just returned from military service and was enrolled in classes at U Montana. Jeff was assigned to digitizing maps of the Beartooth Mountains and other mapping projects in the states of the Northern Rockies. But he was particularly interested in Glacial Lake Missoula and the Ice Age Floods. And he knew he had the computer skills to use existing data to put a map together. As the maps grew larger, more complex and included features like hill shaded relief and multi 1-degree by 1-degree tiles fitted together that no one else could do, it slowly dawned on Jim that this guy was really something. The only limitations were equipment – no Dept of Ag computer could handle it nor could any plotter manage the print task. In those early days this involved overcoming computer limitations on the size of files. Combining digital elevation models for multiple tiles and maps resulted in gigantic files for the times and processor’s abilities. Jeff wrote 2500 lines of code linking multiple computers, writing new code to handle the plotter problems to complete this project over about a two year time span, working on this while completing other jobs which had more firm deadlines. The basic data came from the USGS digital version of topographic maps supplemented with data from NASA satellite images. Google was working with some of the same data for use in its own maps, and there was some back and forth communication with them on how to solve similar mapping problems. Mapping issues that came up for this project included drawing a boundary for the west coast at a time when the ocean level was much lower – which had to be done by hand. And decisions about the extent of the lake and the extent of the continental ice sheet and glaciers – maximum levels and multiple contributors as to extent were used. Initial drafts were printed on a pen plotter, then the imagery was upgraded to an ink jet printer, which was subject to fading. The final map with photo images was turned into print plates by the Forest Service special Publications group in Washington. Approval for even printing the map was complicated. – it was (and still is) the only map ever printed by USFS which was more than a travel map and identified by author. An initial printing of 2000 copies was authorized – and sold out in 3 days. Another printing of 2500 was done. The USGS ordered a third printing they sold from their Denver and Spokane Libraries. It is no longer available, supplanted by on-line maps, and subsequent versions with different detail (such as highways) done by Eastern Washington University and others. A few copies of the original map still exist, and Jeff is still working on cartography for a private firm in Missoula. The importance of the original map to give IAFI credibility and as a tool to tell the story and sell the need for a special designation has never been officially recognized…until now. Thank you Jeff for your personal commitment to this project, and thank you Jim for your support in making it happen.
IAFI Store Prices Increase for Non-Members in January
Non-members of IAFI have been increasingly taking advantage of our trust-based Free Shipping for Members. So we’ll be increasing the IAFI Store prices by 10% for non-members beginning in January 2024, but Members will continue to get Free Shipping and a 10% discount off their Cart total. Rather than impose a Member Login requirement we’ll be sending out a coupon code that members can use for their 10% Off and Free Shipping. We’ll see how this works out and make adjustments as needed to keep Store prices low for our Members.
Let Your Feet, and Your Imagination Roam at Rowena Crest and Tom McCall Preserve
Scenic Rowena Crest and the Tom McCall Preserve area provide an incredibly scenic place to let your feet, and your imagination wander as you look out on a major chokepoint along the Ice Age Floods path. The wildflower displays are amazing during the Spring, but several compelling flood-related features are visible from the vantage of the Rowena Crest Viewpoint any time of year. Rowena Crest lies nearly 700 feet above the Columbia River at the upstream end of the Rowena Plateau, a miles-long plateau that the river flows along. Just upriver from the plateau is the narrow section of the Gorge known as the Rowena Gap The drive to the viewpoint on old Hwy 30 from either east or west is a spectacular ride through a wonderous section of the Columbia River Gorge. A roundabout parking area at the viewpoint, with a safety wall above a sheer cliff, provides a great observation point eastward toward Rowena Gap. At Rowena Crest it’s easy to imagine what it might have been like to witness the approach of those massive floods. There is not yet scientific evidence that humans were in the area to bear witness to the Ice Age Floods, but there is solid evidence of humans in the Americas by that time. And there is growing concensus that if they came in during a glacial maximum, they would have come in by a coastal route that offered plentiful food and shelter for their journey. The mouth of the Columbia River would have been the first major waterway path inland that might have led them to settle in the area of the Floods. Your village might have been situated across the Columbia at the mouth of the Klickitat River where the town of Lyle now sits. If you were foraging, or just relaxing, atop Rowena Crest on a late summer day, you might have felt the ground begin to temble as if there were a small earthquake, but the trembling would have slowly increased for a few hours. Eventually you would have heard a low roaring sound that also grew over an hour or more before you could see turbulent brown muddy water begin flooding across the broad basin to the east. Then the roaring flood of water, only a few feet deep at first, would have entered the narrows, now called Rowena Gap, and sped on, crashing against the promontory you’re standing on and being diverted toward your village which was quickly washed away by the muddy torrent. But the muddy flood waters would have kept rising, unlike the Spring floods you’re used to on the Columbia, becoming a hundred feet deep, then two hundred as the levels just kept rising. Soon a huge whirlpool formed in the flood waters near the base of the promontory and a giant eddy formed where your village had been as flood waters flowed backward up the Klickitat River even as the bulk of the water continued downstream on the main stem of the Columbia. As the flood waters reached 400 and 500 feet deep and kept coming, suddenly to your right and left, huge blocks of the promontory broke off and slumped down into the rampaging flood waters. Now, even more fearful, you would have begun running south toward higher ground, climbing higher and higher as the still rising flood waters poured across the plateau and plunged into the small creek valley to the west, tearing away at the valley walls and massively widening that little valley. Eventually the flood waters stopped chasing you upward as you climbed higher, 200 then 300 feet above the now submerged promontory. Now, as you turned and looked out across that expanse of muddy water you could see massive white blocks of ice being carried along on the flood waters, similar but inconceivably larger than the ice blocks carried on the river during the Spring floods. But the flood waters didn’t begin to recede that day, nor the next, as they might in the Spring floods. In fact it was almost half a lunar cycle before they began to slowly recede, exposing a mud coated Columbia River valley that was now noticeably wider, with layers of shear vertical rock walls extending over 1000 feet above the normal river level below. As you began the recovery from the floods devastation, your family returned from from their hunting and gathering in the high mountain meadows, and you have an incredible story to pass along to them and your ancestors. This story is easy to imagine as you look out to the east from Rowena Crest. The onrushing Ice Age Floods waters easily flowed over the low relief of the broad Dalles Basin to the east, but the major Rowena Gap created a chokepoint in the path of the floods as they made their way through the Columbia River Gorge. This “hydraulic dam” forced the flood waters to build to over 1000 feet deep in this area, flowing hundreds of feet deep over Rowena Crest while forming a temporary lake in The Dalles basin. It is estimated that many of the 40-100 Ice Age Floods may have taken up to a month to completely flush through the system to the Pacific Ocean, but the duration of the flood waters at any point along the path probably lasted less than a couple of weeks. But this was more than enough to create several major floods features visible from this vantage point. At Columbia River level below and east of the promontory is a round Kolk pond that was created by giant whirlpools in the flood waters as they were deflected around the Rowena Crest promontory. Other similar Kolk features can also be seen on the Dallesport area to the east, and along the hiking path atop Rowena Crest where they are marked by surrounding groves of oak trees. Across the Columbia, the floods deposited a huge eddy gravel bar that the entire town of Lyle, Washington is built upon. The Klickitat River was backed
CONSUELO LARRABEE – April 14, 1939 – June 21, 2023
Consuelo Larrabee, a beloved member of the Ice Age Floods Institute Board of Directors and the Cheney-Spokane Chapter Board passed away suddenly on June 21, 2023; she was 84 years of age. Consuelo’s life could be described as one who advocated passionately for animal rights, human rights and the arts. She worked closely with children for most of her life, inspiring the love of learning, the outdoors, music, and animals, to mention only a few. She very much enjoyed traveling the world, often with friends or to see friends, and her trips always included hiking, the arts, meeting people, and enjoying great food with friends. She very often credited her mother and grandmother who provided her with a safe, playful, creative, inspirational and literate childhood. Consuelo’s grandfather, Charles X Larrabee, was instrumental in 1915 with creating Larrabee State Park, established as the first state park in Washington. He and his wife Francis donated an extensive piece of land along Chuckanut Bay to create the park and continued to donate large parcels of land over the years to expand the park. Larrabee State Park was one of Consuelo’s favorite places to spend time throughout her life, hiking through the beautiful forests, and enjoying the rocky beach. Consuelo contributed to and changed the lives of so many humans and animals, making their worlds a more special place. She loved those around her deeply, always celebrating a birthday, wedding anniversary or important event and made sure all knew they held a special place in her heart. Consuelo was a member of the Ice Age Floods Institute Board of Directors for almost 20 years and also served on the Board of Directors for the Cheney-Spokane Chapter for the last seven years. Her involvement with the Ice Age Floods story was one of the great loves in her life. She carried brochures in her handbag and in her car, distributing them to individuals she met every place she travelled. She made sure they knew of how the Great Missoula Floods created the landscape we enjoy in the Northwest today. Along with several others involved with the Institute and the Cheney-Spokane Chapter, she worked diligently with this team over a couple of years writing Floods interpretive signs. These signs are located in the Ice Age Floods Playground at Riverfront Park located on the east bank of the Spokane River in downtown Spokane. These signs provide visitors of all ages the opportunity to learn about all that shaped our regions topography. Consuelo was born on April 14th, 1939,; to Edward Payne and Consuelo McMillan Larrabee in Spokane, Washington. She attended school at St. Paul’s School for girls in Walla Walla, Washington. She then received her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from San Francisco Art Institute, as well as a Masters in Special Education from Teacher’s College at Columbia University. Following her father who had spent seven years studying at Oxford University, she too attended Oxford University, taking teaching courses…and playing softball! Consuelo served as a head teacher in a program for Chinese immigrant children in San Francisco. This was followed by being a classroom teacher for deaf children, some with multiple disabilities, in New York City, San Francisco and Spokane. In 1989, Consuelo moved to San Juan Island for sixteen years. She served as Head of the Program Committee for the local theatre, as well as being active in building an animal shelter and promoting awareness about Orca whale population. Consuelo lived in Seattle for nine years, where she dedicated her life to the Seattle Opera, (being chauffer to many soloists who became life friends), the Seattle Animal Shelter and Discovery Park. Upon moving to Spokane in 2016, Consuelo dedicated her time to being a volunteer with KPBS and serving on their Board of Directors. She loved the Spokane Symphony and always played classical music in her home. Consuelo truly contributed to change in our world, and she will be sorely missed by many! Remembrances of Consuelo Larrabee may be made to KPBS in Spokane, SpokAnimal or the Ice Age Floods Institute.