BLUFF-OLOGY,THE GEOLOGY OF THE BLUFF

In the fall of 1994 the Washington State Department of Transportation cleared and excavated a troublesome section of State Route 12 just inside the city limits of Aberdeen. The townsfolk dubbed the exposure “the bluff”. The bluff was a 300-foot high exposure of Tertiary rocks, which was one of the best in Western Washington. And it provoked a lot of comments from the “green sensitive” townsfolk who were seeing the geological nature of their city for the first time. As a result of these comments I wrote a short pamphlet entitled Bluff-ology to be used by local teachers in the local elementary and middle schools. The pamphlet was born out of some controversy (the bluff was ugly, the bluff was interesting, how did those shells get so far above high tide?) and it was the controversy that provided an opportunity to inject some geology into the local culture. The result was the use of the pamphlet by a few teachers, a city Parks Dept. sign out by the bluff, a front-page article in the local newspaper and a few talks at service clubs.