About The Ice Age Oregon Trail
Presented by Rick Thompson, President of the Lower Columbia
Chapter of the Ice Age Floods Institute
The rich soil of the Willamette Valley is from eastern Washington,
brought here by the ice age Lake Missoula Floods. It was this soil that
attracted Oregon Trail pioneers to become part of one of the largest non-forced
migrations in all of history. But did you know that, from Pendleton to
the Dalles, some of the trails the pioneers used were actually channels
of those very floods? Celebrate the 175th Anniversary of the
Oregon Trail by joining us for Thompson’s visual journey with photos, LIDAR (Light Detection And Ranging)
images and maps along the canyons, through the water gaps and next to the giant
gravel bars the pioneers saw as they traveled the flood channels carved long
before they arrived.
About the Speaker:
A native Oregonian, Mr. Thompson loves to share the beauty and
natural history of the great Northwest.
Being intrigued by the land formations, huge boulders and glacial
erratics in this area he embarked on a 20-year study of the effects in NW
Oregon and SW Washington of the largest ice age flood which propelled over 500
cubic miles of water, ice, rock and mud across eastern Washington, raced
through the Columbia River Gorge, covered the Willamette Valley with up to 400
feet of water and left gravel bars miles wide and hundreds of feet high, giant
current ripples, many flood channels and dotted the land with glacial erratics
– rocks not indigenous to this area. Though geology is not his
profession, the Lake Missoula Floods have become his passion.
Mr. Thompson is President of the Lower Columbia Chapter of the Ice
Age Floods Institute, which holds monthly public educational meetings in
Tualatin. He was instrumental in identifying and scripting signage for
several significant glacial erratics in Washington County; has been interviewed
for a number of newspaper articles and was twice featured on Grant McOmie’s “Grant’s
Getaways” television program.
He has created self-guided driving tours based on his field trips
and has authored two books: The Hunt for Iceberg Erratics and GigaFlood
– The Largest of the Lake Missoula Floods in Northwest Oregon and Southwest
Washington, which is illustrated with his own photographs, maps and
diagrams to show you the evidence still visible today from this catastrophic
flood which so affected the Northwest.
Copies of Rick Thompson’s GigaFlood book, drive guides and
DVD will be available for purchase at the event.
For more information, check out Mr. Thompson’s website: www.GigaFlood.com.
