10/30/2026
The area in which we live.
On our way to Albany, Oregon for OFFF. The shop will not be open today, tomorrow or Monday. See you all next Thursday with lots to share!
This valley, now home to 300,000 people, was once the site of multiple violent megafloods. 😮
Today, it's a peaceful valley with retail centers, neighborhoods, and farms, but it was once the site of some of the greatest and most violent flood events in Earth's history.
Around 20,000 years ago, the Cordilleran Ice Sheet dammed the Clark Fork River in Montana, forming glacial Lake Missoula—a vast lake nearly 200 miles (321 km) long, 2,000 feet (610 m) deep, and holding more water than modern-day Lake Erie and Lake Ontario combined.
When the ice dam failed, the entire lake drained in as little as 48 hours, unleashing a catastrophic flood that ripped west across Idaho and Washington.
Downstream, another ice lobe blocked the Columbia River, creating glacial Lake Columbia. When Missoula's floodwaters surged into Lake Columbia, the overflow spilled across eastern Washington, carving the dramatic Channeled Scablands we see today.
All of that chaos eventually funneled to this valley and the Wallula Gap.
At the height of the floods, more than 200 cubic miles (833 cubic km) of water per day poured into this valley—and only about 40 cubic miles (166 cubic km) per day could get through the Gap.
This forced the floodwaters to back up and form Lake Lewis, a temporary lake that inundated what is now the cities of Pasco, Kennewick, and Richland.
These megafloods didn't happen just once, they likely occurred *dozens* of times over thousands of years.
Standing at the Wallula Gap today, it's hard to imagine that such a beautiful spot was once the bottleneck for a massive and violent flood that reshaped the landscape of modern-day eastern Washington.
Source: Wikipedia, nps[dot]gov/places/wallula-gap-national-natural-landmark[dot]htm