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Joseph Thomas Pardee and the Spokane Flood Controversy

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Joseph Thomas Pardee and the Spokane Flood Controversy Vol. 5, No. 9 September 1995 1995 ANNUAL GSA TODAY MEETING A Publication of the Geological Society of America Preregistration Deadline: September 29 Technical Program Schedule: Surprise Endings to Catastrophism see page 177 and Controversy on the Columbia Joseph Thomas Pardee and the GSA Beneficiary of the Spokane Flood Controversy Pardee and Kelly Estates Vic Baker Robert L. Fuchs Department of Geosciences, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721 President, GSA Foundation Mary P. Kelly died in a Missoula, Montana, nursing home on November 16, 1994. Her last years had not been easy, in spite of the careful attention of her close friend, guardian, and attor- ney, Jack McInnis. Mary had broken both hips during the prior two years, and this left her bed-ridden and gener- Joseph ally incapacitated. Additional infirmi- Thomas ties such as pneumonia and circulatory Pardee problems, too often common afflica- tions among the elderly, had taken their toll. However, she had plans for the future right to the end—a return to her Philipsburg, Montana, ranch, driv- ing the two cars that she wouldn’t let Jack sell, attending the GSA Cordilleran Section 1995 meeting in Fairbanks. Figure 1. Late Pleistocene strandlines of glacial Lake Missoula at Missoula, Montana. As recog- These were ambitious plans for an 89- nized by Pardee (1910, 1942), the highest strandlines reach 1280 m. Lake Missoula was 635 m year-old invalid, but Mary was a strong deep in the vicinity of its ice dam in northern Idaho. individual and the only descendant of a unique but largely unheralded geolo- gist, Joseph T. Pardee, who died in 1960. The Pardee-Kelly family chronol- ABSTRACT topographic map. This map shows the ogy, spanning nearly a century, great Potholes Cataract, now recog- Joseph Thomas Pardee (1871– includes such significant events as nized as the product of cataclysmic 1960) played a key role in the Joe’s key role in the resolution of one flooding (Bretz et al., 1956). The year Spokane Flood controversy, in which of the major North American geologi- was 1910. In that same year Pardee the cataclysmic flood origins of the cal controversies of the twentieth cen- (1910) described the geomorphological Channeled Scabland were intensely tury and the second largest gift ever evidence for a great glacial lake occupy- debated during the decades of the received by GSA. Joe Pardee’s career ing the intermontane basins of western 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s. and the related chronicle of the Pardee Montana during the late Pleistocene. Pardee first drew attention to glacial family—Joe and his wife Ruby, Mary He described the prominent strandlines Lake Missoula in 1910. He suggested and her husband Ralph Kelly—are a of the lake (Fig. 1) and the evidence for it to J Harlen Bretz as a source of the story of lives spent out of the limelight, lake impoundment behind a glacial cataclysmic flooding, just prior to quietly and frugally, lives that history Mary and Ralph Kelly lobe in the basin of modern Lake Pend Bretz’s famous presentation of the has now shown to have been scientifi- Oreille in northern Idaho. These rela- flood hypothesis to the January 12, cally and financially important to both tions were well known. Pardee (1910, to Philipsburg, Montana, when Joe was 1927, meeting of the Washington geology and to GSA. The article by Vic p. 376) even credited T. C. Chamberlin three, and his father developed the Academy of Sciences. Though Pardee Baker, that starts on the first page of with the discovery of the lake strand- Algonquin mine. Joe’s education was did not publicly advocate the cata- this issue of GSA Today, relates the boil- lines: “Chamberlin conceived the idea at Presbyterian College in Deer Lodge, clysmic flood hypothesis, his 1940 ing controversy that for more than 40 of a glacial dam and furthermore tenta- Montana, and the University of Cali- revelation of the evidence for rapid years surrounded the Channeled Scab- tively suggested that its location was fornia at Berkeley. After college he draining of glacial Lake Missoula, lands, the Columbia Plateau, the in the Pend Oreille region with outflow opened an assay office and operated a including giant current ripples and Spokane (Bretz) Flood, and glacial Lake by way of Spokane.” The glacial lake gold and sapphire mine, but a growing immense flood bars, proved to play Missoula; this is the scientific side of was named for Missoula, Montana, interest in geology led him to the a pivotal role in the eventual accep- the story. The singular financial event where its strandlines were particularly USGS. He and his wife Ruby moved to tance of the cataclysmic flooding occurred upon Mary’s death, when prominent (Fig. 1). Washington in 1909, where the family hypothesis by the scientific GSA’s financial assets were enriched by lived until 1954. community. the addition of the Joseph T. Pardee HYPOTHESIZING THE The records indicate that Joe Memorial Fund. The income from this SPOKANE FLOOD Pardee was perhaps the consummate INTRODUCTION $2.7 million endowment is to be used employee—accurate, thorough, versa- In the summer of 1922, J Harlen by the Society “for research, study and The debate over the origin of the tile, a competent professional, an effec- Bretz began his field research with educational advancement in the field Channeled Scabland region of eastern tive public servant, a clear writer, and a small field parties of advanced students of geology and science.” Washington is one of the great contro- teacher to those who followed. He was in the Channeled Scabland. His scab- Joe Pardee was a career employee versies in the history of geology. The at home with both the leading geolo- land studies continued over the next of the U.S. Geological Survey. He was story, as generally recounted (Baker, gists of his day and the ranchers and seven field seasons. During those years appointed to the Survey in 1909 and 1978, 1981; Gould, 1980), centers on prospectors he associated with in the Bretz traversed the entire region first retired in 1941. During 32 years of the singular role of J Harlen Bretz of field. He fought red tape with a sense on foot and later in his trusty Dodge 4, work, his investigations ranged from the University of Chicago, but there of humor, and his reports from the an early enclosed-body car. He did this glacial deposits to gold deposits, from was another major participant in that field occasionally ended with a snatch with parties of students and his wife, mine sites to dam sites. Joe Pardee debate, Joseph Thomas Pardee. of appropriate original verse. Much of son, daughter, and collie dog. spent most of his career on geology in Bretz (1978, personal communica- Joe Pardee’s career was spent mapping Bretz’s first paper on the Chan- the northwestern United States, with tion) recalled that his interest in the in the Northwest, often accompanied neled Scabland was the text of an oral particular emphasis on Montana. Born scabland problem was first piqued by in Salt Lake City in 1871, Joe grew up looking at the newly published Quincy Spokane Flood continued on p. 170 in a mining family. The family moved Estates continued on p. 173 Spokane Flood continued from p. 169 found that Pardee’s “glacial” deposits phenomena I describe certainly IN THIS ISSUE were actually flood bars (Bretz, 1974). appear to be river work “if you could only show where all the water came presentation to the Geological Society Various correspondence in the from in so short a time.” Surprise Endings to of America (Bretz, 1923a). In that paper 1920s led Bretz to believe (Bretz, 1978, Catastrophism and Controversy he took special care not to call upon personal communication) that Pardee on the Columbia: cataclysmic origins. The paper provided was actually considering flooding from PARDEE’S SCABLAND • Joseph Thomas Pardee and the a detailed description of physiographic a glacial Lake Missoula as a cause for HYPOTHESIS Spokane Flood Controversy ..... 169 relations in the region. He did note, the scabland topography. Bretz (1974) Brian K. McDonald, grandson of • GSA Succeeds to Pardee and however, that the indicated channel speculated that Alden dissuaded Pardee Thomas Large, a confidant of both Kelly Estates .................... 169 erosion required prodigious quantities from the idea. Bretz saw a memoran- Bretz and Pardee in the 1920s, has Travel Grant Program .............. 170 of water. Referring to the three outlets dum of September 25, 1922, to David extensively researched correspondence Notice of Council Meeting ......... 170 at the south end of the Hartline Basin White, chief geologist of the U.S. Geo- relating to the origins of the cata- GSA on the Web ................... 170 (Dry Coulee, Lenore Canyon, and logical Survey, in which Alden noted of clysmic flooding hypothesis. Thomas Long Lake Canyon), Bretz (1923a, Pardee’s work: “… very significant phe- PEP Remarks ....................... 171 Large wrote prolifically on various p. 593–594) stated, “… these are truly nomena were discovered in the region Penrose Conference Scheduled ..... 173 speculations concerning scabland distributary canyons. They mark a southwest of Spokane.… The results so Forum ............................ 174 origins. Correspondence (researched distributive or braided course of the far … require caution in their interpre- Getting Rid of Garbage: A Room by McDonald), in the summer of 1922 Spokane glacial flood over a basalt tation. The conditions warn against Problem for the 21st Century ....... 174 to Barton W. Evermann, contains the surface which possessed no adequate premature publication.” GSAF Update ...................... 176 following passages: pre-Spokane valleys.” At the famous 1927 “scabland 1995 Annual Meeting The idea of a truly catastrophic debate” at the Geological Society of … One of Pardee’s most interesting theories is that this broad belt of Overview and Schedule ...........
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