Palouse Falls and the Impossible Flood: When Eastern Washington Drowned
Palouse Falls — Washington's official state waterfall — plunges 198 feet into a basalt amphitheater that looks like it was carved by gods. It was. Sort of.
During the last Ice Age, a massive ice dam in Montana repeatedly formed and burst, releasing the contents of glacial Lake Missoula — a body of water as large as Lake Erie — in catastrophic floods that tore across eastern Washington. The water was 400 feet deep in places, traveling at 65 mph, carrying house-sized boulders.
These Missoula Floods — there were at least 40 over 2,000 years — carved the Channeled Scablands, created Dry Falls (once the world's largest waterfall), and shaped Palouse Falls. The geological evidence is overwhelming and utterly humbling.
But here's what makes it mysterious: when geologist J Harlen Bretz first proposed the flood theory in the 1920s, the entire geological establishment rejected it. The idea of catastrophic floods was too close to biblical mythology. It took decades for the evidence to overcome scientific bias.
Yakama oral traditions had always included stories of the Great Flood. They were right. The scientists were wrong. For decades.
"Palouse Falls is a reminder that the impossible can be true," Captain Ron says. "A wall of water taller than a football field, moving faster than a car on the freeway. It happened. Dozens of times. What else that we consider impossible is actually just waiting for us to find the evidence?"
