Palouse River Canyon
January 19, 2016
Photographer: Stu Witmer
Summary Author: Stu Witmer
For more than 2 million years during the Miocene Epoch basaltic lava oozed from cracks in the ground over 63,000 sq mi (164,000 sq km) of what is now the Pacific Northwest of the U.S. The Palouse River Canyon (above) in the Channeled Scablands of Central Washington displays the wedding-cake like appearance of the layers of that basalt. This dramatic canyon was formed about 12,000 years ago when the massive Missoula Floods from broken ice dams surged through the area gouging huge scars in the layers of ancient basalt. The floods changed the course of the Palouse River and sent it flowing down this ready-made canyon. Humans arrived in this area about the same time as the floods. It’s interesting to consider that there may have been humans present to witness some of these landscape-altering floods.