Bretz's Flood : The Remarkable Story of a Rebel Geologist and the World's Greatest Flood

Conventional geologic thinking always said that the landscape between Idaho and the Cascade Mountains — a unique place characterized by gullies, coulees, and deserts — was created over millions of years by rivers that had long since gone dry. Science professor J Harlen Bretz (who made up his own name and intentionally didn’t use a period after J), thought otherwise. Based on extensive research and keen observation, he believed this area had been scoured in a virtual instant by a massive flood. Because Bretz was a gadfly in the scientific community and his idea sounded like an attempt to prove the biblical flood, he was personally and professionally attacked and humiliated. Undaunted, he applied all of his skills to proving his thesis, but he would have to wait for confirmation until satellite photography became widespread years after his retirement. Bretz's Flood tells an exciting story of an epic mystery of the western landscape, how it came to be solved, and the fascinating scientist who did it. The land between Idaho and the Cascade Mountains is characterized by gullies, coulees, and deserts--in geologic terms, it is a wholly unique place on the earth. Legendary geologist J Harlen Bretz, starting in the 1920s, was the first to explore the area. Bretz, a former science teacher at Franklin High School in Seattle and then a professor at the University of Washington and later the University of Chicago, eventually formed the theory that the land was scoured in a virtual instant by a massive flood. His original thinking was rewarded with various forms of public and academic humiliation. In the mid-twentieth century, his theory sounded a bit too much like the biblical flood, and the scientific world wanting nothing to do with that sort of idea. (Ironically, Bretz was an avowed atheist, so this was hardly his inspiration.) Bretz's Flood tells the dramatic story of this scientific maverick-how he came to study the region, his radical theory that a huge flood created it, and how the mainstream geologic community campaigned to derail him from pursuing an idea that satellite photos would confirm decades later "The land between Idaho and the Cascade Mountains in Eastern Washington is characterized by dramatic coulees, gullies, and deserts--in geologic terms, it is a wholly unique place on Earth. J. Harlen Bretz was the iconoclastic geologist who peered back in time to answer the riddle of how this land came to be ... He hypothesized that a catastrophic flood--likely the largest in Earth's history--has scoured the land in a virtual instant. Using nothing more than the core tools of observation, hypothesis, and theory, Bretz recognized that the region's bizarre formations and geologic oddities didn't conform to the patterns of a landscape shaped gradually over time. Instead, the scablands looked more like a partially formed, braided river channel that had spread out over several hundred miles--a topography that could only be caused by a sudden rush of an unprecedented volume of water ... [By] the mid-seventies Landsat satellite photography confirmed his findings, and in 1979 he was awarded the Penrose Medal, the Geological Society of America's most prestigious award."--Dust jacket flap The masterful story of the scientific rebel who dared to think outside the box—and changed the course of geologic history The land between Idaho and the Cascade Mountains is characterized by gullies, coulees, and deserts—in geologic terms, it is a wholly unique place on the earth. In the 1920s, legendary geologist and professor J Harlen Bretz peered back in time to answer the riddle of how this land came to be, becoming one of the first people to explore the area. Defying the conventional wisdom of his peers, Bretz saw a landscape that had been instantly scoured by a flood of unprecedented scale. Though met with public and academic humiliation—his theory sounded too much like the biblical flood—Bretz persevered and went on to discover what everyone else had failed to see. Bretz's Flood tells the dramatic story of this scientific maverick—how he came to study the region, his radical theory that a huge flood created it, and how the mainstream geologic community campaigned to derail him from pursuing an idea that satellite photos would confirm decades later. Contents 6 Preface 10 An Introduction to the Scablands 12 1 16 2 90 3 228 Notes 286 Bibliography 298 Acknowledgments 302 About the Author 305