A COMMUNITY EFFORT TO FOLLOW THE PATHWAYS OF THE GLACIAL LAKE MISSOULA FLOODS

In 1927, at a meeting of the Geological Society of Washington, D.C., J Harlan Bretz presented a geologic story that opened the floodgates of a controversy that shook the geosciences for more than 40 years. The roots of that controversy were quite simple-a cataclysmic flood of water during the Pleistocene was responsible for the creation of the Channeled Scablands, an area of complex and dramatic landforms cut into the basalt tableland of the east-central portion of the state of Washington.

Subsequent geoscientists, led by Joseph T. Pardee, have found that the flood and its now recognized source, Glacial Lake Missoula, are responsible for far more than just the Channeled Scablands. Indeed, the floods and the lake, as well as the ice dam that created the lake, have been identified as the reason for a host of seemingly bizarre and out of place features that, taken together, they attest to the size and the power of a series of great floods that roared across Idaho, Washington, and Oregon; and to existence of a huge glacial lake that, at times, supplied those floods with more than 500 cubic miles of water.

In 1993 the National Park Service initiated a process of community involvement that culminated in February 2001 with the issuance of a proposal calling for the creation of a National Park Service System unit dedicated to the geologic history of the ice age floods and their relationship to the creation of the Channeled Scablands. The proposal also calls for the recognition of the geoscientists who applied many of the basic principles of geology to unravel the mysteries of this story. That community process involved individuals from across the four state region affected by the ice age floods, individuals drawn from the private sector as well as representatives from a number of Federal, state, and local governmental agencies, and academic institutions. The proposal is now before Congress and it is now up to Congress to decide whether or not the ice age floods and the geoscientists connected to their story should be recognized by the creation of an Ice Age Floods National Geologic Trail, a designation that would be the first of its kind for the National Park Service.