Geological Survey Bulletin 611 Guidebook of the Western United States: Part A

SHEET No. 22. (click on image for an enlargement in a new window)

From Marshall a branch of the Northern Pacific runs southward to the Palouse country. Two other railways that run parallel with the Northern Pacific between Marshall and Spokane can be seen on the right. The nearer line is that of the Oregon-Washington Railroad & Navigation Co., and the other is the Spokane, Portland & Seattle Railway. Just beyond milepost 98 the Northern Pacific crosses both these lines and continues on their right to Cheney, the next station.

Near Cheney a branch line turns to the north and runs to Medical Lake and Coulee City, in the heart of the Big Bend country, so called because it lies inside of the great westward bend of Columbia River. The two railways just mentioned lie only a short distance to the left, but beyond Cheney they bend to the east and can not be seen again from the Northern Pacific line, although they parallel this line to Columbia River near Pasco. Cheney is situated on the great lava plain of eastern Washington. Near the railway the traveler sees little but bare rock, but he can catch glimpses here and there of the low rolling hills that constitute the great wheat belt of this part of the State. The railway follows in a general way a slight depression in the surface, but the traveler may be surprised at riding over such a wide stretch of country without seeing any flowing creeks or even creek channels. In humid regions there is a creek channel in every valley. Even in the arid country of the Southwest there are established watercourses, which, though frequently or generally dry, take care of the occasional flood waters; but here there are only shallow irregular valleys, and no stream channels are to be seen. True there may be here and there, strung out in a more or less definite line, a series of shallow basins holding swamps or even shallow lakes, but these have no outlets above ground, and if they are connected at all the connection must be by an underground channel. It is evident that during most of the year there is little running water in this region, as the annual precipitation decreases from 18 inches at Spokane to 7 inches at Pasco. Most of this is absorbed by the soil,¹ and the remainder finds its way into the open layers between the sheets of dense lava and reappears as springs in some neighboring canyon or coulee.

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¹F. C. Calkins states: "It [the soil] is so porous that rain or melted snow is quickly absorbed by it, so that a smaller proportion is lost by run-off or by evaporation from puddles than would be lost if it were more clayey and impervious, and, on the other hand, it is not loose enough to allow the water to sink rapidly and become unavailable, as it does in a deep sandy soil. The spaces between the particles of the fine loam are so small that the water is held in them by adhesion or capillary attraction and yields to the force of gravity only slowly and to a comparatively small extent." Therefore a large proportion of the slight precipitation is kept sufficiently near the surface to be used by the growing wheat, and successful grain culture is possible with a rainfall that would be insufficient in a soil of less advantageous physical constitution.

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A possible explanation of the peculiar scouring of the surface rocks into basins without any definite stream channels is that it was done by ice. This subject is more fully considered in the footnote given on page 163.

At Fishtrap there are a number of small hills on both sides of the track which appear, to one familiar with glacial topography, to be of glacial origin. When examined closely they are found to be composed of light-colored clay or shale which is very different from the material deposited by ice. The peculiar hummocky form of the hills is due to the softness and fineness of the material composing them and to the peculiarities of erosion in a semiarid climate. Few if any watercourses are developed in the hills, hence they have no regular pattern or arrangement. The rains are infrequent, only a few gullies are established, and the development of such gullies tends to produce isolated conical mounds rather than low continuous ridges, such as would be produced in similar material in more humid regions.

As the material composing these hills is fine and evenly bedded, it was probably deposited in a body of standing water, and as its age, so far as the evidence has been obtained, corresponds in a general way to that of similar beds (Ellensburg formation) in the Yakima Valley, it is considered to be a part of that formation. The bulk of the sediment deposited in this great lake was dropped near shore in the vicinity of the Cascade Mountains, and only the finer material was carried as far east as Fishtrap. This was deposited over the basalt in a thin sheet, which has been largely removed, heaving isolated outliers like those described above.¹

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¹Although there is little doubt about the origin of the Fishtrap Hills, there is considerable uncertainty in the minds of geologists as to whether there has ever been an incursion of the northern glaciers into this region. The fact which leads to the belief that ice once occupied this country is the presence, far southwest of Spokane, of bowlders of granite and quartzite 12 to 20 inches in diameter. These bowlders are not numerous, but occasionally the traveler, if his sight is sufficiently acute, may catch glimpses of them, even from the swiftly moving train. Generally the presence of such bowlders is taken as a certain indication of the former occupation of the country by ice, but it has not yet been satisfactorily determined whether these bowlders were brought directly by the glacier and were dropped from its moving mass, whether they were floated along on cakes of ice in a large lake, or whether they were simply washed out over this plain from the ice front when it was in the vicinity of Spokane. If the bowlders here were as numerous and as large as the bowlders in North Dakota west of Missouri River there would probably be no question as to their glacial transportation, but in the State of Washington they are so few in number and are scattered over so wide an extent of country that some doubt naturally arises as to whether moving ice was the vehicle by which they were transported to their present resting places.

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Near milepost 123 there is some rough country that shows on a small scale the effect of erosion on the sheets of basalt. In a more humid region most of the sharp edges of the tables would be rounded off and the slopes would be gentle and regular, but in a semiarid country each remnant of a lava sheet or other hard bed of rock stands up sharp and distinct as steps on the hillside or as isolated tables or mesas on a small scale. Thus the sheets of lava were not swept away layer by layer, as one peels an onion, but were cut through in many places, leaving rugged remnants here and there that make a distinct type of badland topography.

The railway descends into a pronounced valley and reaches the town of Sprague, named for Gen. J. W. Sprague, a former manager of the Pacific coast division. Railway shops formerly here have been removed and the town is now dependent on the dry farming of the adjacent uplands.

The train runs down the valley and at a distance of 3 miles from Sprague comes to the upper end of Colville Lake. This strip of water adds a pleasing variety to an otherwise rather monotonous landscape, but it lacks the picturesque setting of trees and mountains that give to the lakes farther east their charm and beauty. The railway curves in and out around the projecting spurs of basalt on the west shore to a point near the outlet of the lake and there turns more to the west and crosses the basaltic plateau.

Many bowlders of foreign material such as granite and quartzite may be observed near the south end of the lake and along the line westward at least as far as milepost 138, but it is doubtful if any can be found beyond that point.

Ritzville, the largest town between Spokane and Pasco, is the center of a rich agricultural district. This is a part of the great wheat belt of eastern Washington that has been so wonderfully developed by dry-farming methods. About a mile beyond Ritzville a branch line turning to the right (west) and known as the Ellensburg cut-off has been grade and is said to be ready for the rails. When this line is completed it will not only open up a large area of farming land but also give a line to Ellensburg, west of Columbia River, 100 miles shorter than the present route.¹

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¹The traveler may wonder why the Northern Pacific, having Puget Sound as its objective point, should bend so far to the south after leaving Spokane and then turn to the north after crossing Columbia River at Pasco. The first intention of the company was to build a line to Portland down Columbia River, as well as a line to Puget Sound across the Cascade Mountains, and a coast line connecting Portland and Puget Sound. At the time it was decided to recommence construction, in 1879, the Oregon Railway & Navigation Co. had built a line from Portland up the south bank of Columbia River to Wallula, at the mouth of Walla Walla River. In order to hasten construction of the main line of the Northern Pacific it was decided to utilize this line for the transportation of material for that part of the through line which lies east of Pasco and to postpone for a time the construction of the line along the north bank of Columbia River and that across the Cascade Mountains. Immediately after the main line was completed, in 1883, the construction of the line across the Cascade Mountains by way of the Yakima Valley was begun. The controlling reason for swinging the line so far to the south was to make the connection with the Oregon Railway & Navigation Co.'s railroad, as stated above, but there were other reasons, such as the possibilities of obtaining large traffic in the Yakima Valley, and the fact that any crossing of Columbia River above Pasco involved much heavier grades and more expensive construction than the present crossing. The construction of the line by the Northern Pacific along the north bank of Columbia River was delayed so long that Congress declared a forfeiture of that portion of its charter and of the accompanying land grant, and it was not until 1908 that a railroad was constructed along the north bank of the Columbia by the Spokane, Portland & Seattle Railway Co., a corporation owned jointly by the Northern Pacific and the Great Northern companies.

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