Photograph as originally submitted to this page in the Historical Marker Database www.HMdb.org. Click on photo to resize in browser. Scroll down to see metadata.

Photographer: Barry Swackhamer
Taken: August 13, 2020
Caption: A Fluid Geologic Past Marker
Additional Description: Captions: (bottom left) Steady flow of the mighty Columbia carved this magnificent chasm through the Cascade Mountain Range. The river cuts its channel faster than the smaller tributaries, creating the greatest concentration of waterfalls in North America.; (center) Magma bubbling from fissures in the earth's crust spread across the Columbia Plateau 16.6 to 11.3 million years ago. Flow poured through the Columbia's ancestral valley to the coast forming today's dark Gorge basalt.; (map, lower right) Huge floods, the largest abut ten times the combined flow of all the rivers in the world, rushed across Eastern Washington. When this water reached the Columbia River Gorge, it raised the river level 200 to 1000 feet. Beacon Rock would often be and island and water would frequently lap at Crown Point, the site of present-day Vista House. (J. Harlen Bretz first proposed the theory of an enormous flood washing across Washington through the Gorge in 1920).
Submitted: October 20, 2020, by Barry Swackhamer of Brentwood, California.
Database Locator Identification Number: p544870
File Size: 3.452 Megabytes

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