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Philosophical Perspective the Spokane Flood Debates Geological Society, London, Special Publications The Spokane Flood debates: historical background and philosophical perspective Victor R. Baker Geological Society, London, Special Publications 2008; v. 301; p. 33-50 doi:10.1144/SP301.3 Email alerting click here to receive free email alerts when new articles cite this service article Permission click here to seek permission to re-use all or part of this article request Subscribe click here to subscribe to Geological Society, London, Special Publications or the Lyell Collection Notes Downloaded by on 18 August 2008 © 2008 Geological Society of London The Spokane Flood debates: historical background and philosophical perspective VICTOR R. BAKER Department of Hydrology and Water Resources, The University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721–0011, USA (e-mail: [email protected]) Abstract: The 1920s–1930s debates over the origin of the ‘Channeled Scabland’ landscape of eastern Washington, northwestern USA, focused on the cataclysmic flooding hypothesis of J Harlen Bretz. During the summer of 1922, Bretz began leading field parties of advanced University of Chicago students into the region. In his first paper, published in the Bulletin of the Geological Society of America, Bretz took special care not to mention cataclysmic origins. However, in a subsequent paper in the Journal of Geology, to the editorial board of which he had recently been added, Bretz formally described his hypothesis that an immense late Pleistocene flood, which he named the ‘Spokane Flood’, had derived from the margins of the nearby Cordilleran Ice Sheet. This cataclysm neatly accounted for numerous interrelated aspects of the Channeled Scabland landscape and nearby regions. Nevertheless, the geological community largely resisted Bretz’s hypothesis for decades, despite his enthusiastic and eloquent defence thereof. Resolution of the controversy came gradually, initially through the recognition by J. T. Pardee of a plausible source for the flooding: ice-dammed Pleistocene glacial Lake Missoula in northern Idaho and western Montana. Eventually, by the 1960s, the field evidence for cataclysmic flooding became overwhelming, and physical processes were found to be completely consistent with that evidence. The controversy is of philosophical interest in regard to its documentation of the attitudes of geologists toward hypotheses, which illustrate aspects of geological reasoning that are distinctive in degree from those of other sciences. J Harlen Bretz (there can be no period after the explain the disparate relationships in this landscape. ‘J’ – it was the man’s entire first name) was born Bretz (1928a, p. 89) argued as follows: in 1882. He initiated one of the great debates in the history of geomorphology. While not revolu- The volume of the invading waters much exceeds the capacity of the existing streamways. The valleys entered become river tionary in its implications, the debate is, neverthe- channels, they brim over into neighboring ones, and minor less, instructive for how it illustrates the workings divides within the system are crossed in hundreds of places .... of science; where the latter is defined not as a The topographic features produced during this episode are sterile collection of facts, or even as a logical appli- wholly river-bottom modifications of the invaded and overswept cation of method, but rather as the collective work- drainage network of hills and valleys. Hundreds of cataract ings and attitudes of human beings passionately ledges, of basins and canyons eroded into bed rock, of isolated dedicated to the search for truth. buttes of the bed rock, of gravel bars piled high above the valley The subject of the debate is an unusual land- floors, and of island hills of the weaker overlying formations are ... scape in eastern Washington, northwestern United left at the cessation of this episode . Everywhere the record is of extraordinary vigorous sub-fluvial action. The physiographic States, described by Bretz (1928a, pp. 88–89) as expression of the region is without parallel; it is unique, this chan- follows: neled scabland of the Columbia Plateau. No one with an eye for land forms can cross eastern Washington in daylight without encountering and being impressed by the Introduction ‘scabland.’ Like great scars marring the otherwise fair face to the plateau are these elongated tracts of bare, black rock carved The unique character of the dry river courses into mazes of buttes and canyons. Everybody on the plateau (‘coulees’) of eastern Washington State was recog- knows scabland .... The popular name is a metaphor. The nized by Reverend Samuel Parker (1838), who pro- scablands are wounds only partially healed – great wounds in vided some of the first scientific observations of the the epidermis of soil with which Nature protects the underlying region. He also offered the first, and most prevalent, rock .... The region is unique: let the observer take wings of the hypothesis for the origin of the Grand Coulee; he morning to the uttermost parts of the earth: he will nowhere proposed that it was an abandoned former channel find its likeness. of the Columbia River. Lieutenant T. W. Symons The controversy that led to the debate arose subsequently made a government survey of Grand because of the interpretation that Bretz made, as Coulee, describing his travel: ‘north through the he sought to find a single hypothesis that would coule´e, its perpendicular walls forming a vista From:GRAPES, R. H., OLDROYD,D.&GRIGELIS, A. (eds) History of Geomorphology and Quaternary Geology. Geological Society, London, Special Publications, 301, 33–50. DOI: 10.1144/SP301.3 0305-8719/08/$15.00 # The Geological Society of London 2008. 34 V. R. BAKER like some grand ruined roofless hall, down which the work of J Harlen Bretz. Although formally we traveled hour after hour’ (Symons 1882). In introduced by papers in 1923 (Bretz 1923a, b), the his report, Symons (1882) proposed the hypothesis idea of cataclysmic flooding causing the scablands that the diversion of the Columbia through the was a certainly a matter of informal discussion Grand Coulee was caused by a glacial blockage of before that time. McMacken (1937) credited the the river immediately downstream of its junction hypothesis to A. P. Tooth, of Lewis and Clark with the coulee. This view was generally accepted High School in Spokane, Washington. Bretz for the next few decades (Russell 1893; Dawson undoubtedly knew of this via his friend and bene- 1898; Salisbury 1901; Calkins 1905). factor, Thomas Large, also of Lewis and Clark The Grand Coulee was traversed in 1912 by the High School. Nevertheless, Bretz (pers. commun. American Geographical Society’s Transcontinental 1978) recalled that around 1909, while he was Excursion. This led to several international papers teaching high school science in Seattle, Washington, on the coulee authored by participants on the excur- he became intrigued by an unusual landform on sion. Henri Baulig, Universite´ de Rennes, described the newly published Quincy topographic sheet of the loess, coulees, rock basins, plunge pools and dry the US Geological Survey. The map clearly falls (‘cataract deseche´e de la Columbia’) for the showed the Potholes Cataract of the western area (Baulig 1913). He also noted the immense Quincy Basin (Fig. 1). Bretz wondered how such a scale of the erosion (Baulig 1913, p. 159): ‘peut-eˆtre feature could have been formed without an unique du relief terestre, – unique par ses dimen- obvious river course leading to it. His questions to sions, sinon par son origine’. Karl Oestreich, Univer- geology faculty members at the University of sity of Utrecht, considered the Grand Coulee to be Washington provided no satisfactory answer. ‘eines machtigen Flusses Bett ...ohne jede Spur Bretz conducted extensive studies of the glacial von Zerfall der frischen Form’ (Oestreich 1915). geology of the Puget Sound region near Seattle, He provided another excellent set of descriptions, and in 1910 he left his high school teaching job to including features that he recognized to require pursue graduate studies in glacial geology at the a special explanation, including granite hills University of Chicago. Working with Professors exhumed from burial by the plateau basalt layers, R. D. Salisbury and T. C. Chamberlin, Bretz obtained and almost perpendicular coulee walls locally his PhD in 1913, basing his dissertation on the Puget notched by hanging valleys. Oesterich (1915) Sound glacial geology (Bretz 1913). After a 1-year proposed that the hanging valleys resulted from appointment at the University of Washington, glacial erosion of the coulee, but that the deepening Bretz returned as a beginning faculty member at the of the coulee came about by enhanced fluvial erosion University of Chicago. He began teaching field from the glacially enhanced and diverted Columbia courses in geology, including an advanced summer River. He also recognized that the coulee was cut course that he taught in the Columbia Gorge, where across a pre-glacial divide, which he correctly the Columbia River crosses the Cascade Range noted to lie just north of Coulee City. between Washington and Oregon. An influential report was written by Oscar One of Bretz’s early papers derived from the E. Meinzer, who later founded many of the hydro- Columbia Gorge fieldwork. It dealt with the wide- logical science programmes of the US Geological spread erratic boulders that were widely distributed Survey. Meinzer (1918) proposed that the glacially in the region. Thomas Condon, University of diverted Columbia River ‘cut precipitous gorges Oregon, had earlier described these boulders, and several hundred feet deep, developed three also popularized the idea that they were rafted to cataracts, at least one of which was higher than their locations by berg ice during a marine submerg- Niagara ...and performed an almost incredible ence (Condon 1902, p. 62). He described the sub- amount of work in carrying boulders many miles mergence of the Willamette Valley as an ocean and gouging out holes as much as two hundred sound, as follows: feet deep’.
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