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

SHEET No. 24. (click on image for an enlargement in a new window)

If it is a hot day in midsummer when the traveler passes down the coulee, he may wonder whether the great flows of basalt are not still heating the surface. The plain of the Columbia, which he is rapidly approaching, has a reputation for great heat in the summer, but as it does not show a corresponding temperature high in the other parts of the year it seems obvious that the great heat is caused by the configuration of the mountains and their effect on the movement of the atmospheric currents.

South of Eltopia (see sheet 24, p. 172) the canyon followed by the railway becomes shallower and finally merges with the broad plain of Columbia River. The lava underlies the plain but dips more rapidly toward the south than the slope of the surface, and at Pasco, as shown by drill records, it lies more than 200 feet below river level. This plain is composed of soft clay and sand (Ellensburg formation) and back from the river, where irrigation is impossible, it is nothing but a sagebrush desert. In places the regular surface of the plain is interrupted by low dunes of sand which have drifted up the slope from the channel of the Columbia. The traveler may wonder what can subsist in so desolate a land if he has not yet learned that in many places water can be procured by digging and that the soil stores up enough moisture to raise fair crops when properly cultivated. The climate of the region is semiarid, the precipitation being from 6 to 12 inches a year. The temperature ranges from a minimum of 10° below zero in winter to 110° above zero in summer.

Pasco is a division terminal of the railway and the center of a large irrigated district lying above the town and on the east side of the river. The shade trees and green lawns of the town are in striking contrast to the brown sagebrush of the surrounding country.

Immediately after leaving the station at Pasco the train is upon the great bridge that spans the swirling waters of the Columbia,¹ rivers of the continent—a river that is fed from the melting snows on the mountains of most of the northwestern part of this country and a large part of the mountain region of Canada.

---

¹One of the most interesting parts of the history of the exploration of the northwestern part of the United States is the story of the discovery of the mouth of the Columbia, or rather of the failure to find it by the many navigators who sailed up the western shore for the very purpose of discovery.

In 1788 an English captain discovered and named Cape Disappointment, just to the north of the river's mouth, without recognizing in the inlet to the south the mouth of the greatest river on the coast. In 1789 two Boston trading ships, the Washington and the Columbia, under the command of Capt. Robert Gray, visited the coast for a cargo of furs. Gray thought he saw indications of the mouth of a large river in latitude 46° 10' but did not stop to investigate, and after completing a voyage around the world his vessel, the Columbia, was again dispatched to the Pacific coast in 1791. He spent the winter at Nootka Sound, on Vancouver Island, and in the spring cruised south from the Strait of Fuca in search of the river which he thought he saw three years before. On his way he met the English expedition under Capt. Vancouver going north to explore Puget Sound. Gray informed the commander of one of these vessels of his belief that a large river entered the ocean near latitude 46°, but as the English captain had just passed that point in clear weather and had seen no indication of a river he gave no credence to Gray's report.

Gray persisted in his search and was rewarded by finding the river's mouth as he had expected and by sailing over the bar on May 11, 1792. Gray named the river after his ship, and although for a time the name Oregon, given by Jonathan Carver to the river in 1778, was employed, it was soon abandoned and Columbia came into general use.

Gray's discovery and the careful and accurate entry in his log book of the circumstances connected with it were largely instrumental in later deciding in favor of the United States the controversy with Great Britain over the ownership of Oregon Territory. Gray's services to his country are commemorated by the names of Grays Bay and Grays Point, on the river nearly opposite Astoria, and of Grays Harbor, a commodious bay on the Washington coast farther north.

---

Although the Northern Pacific crosses Columbia River only a few miles above the mouth of Snake River, the junction of these two streams can not be readily seen from the train, but the Oregon-Washington Railroad & Navigation Co.'s bridge which crosses just below the Snake is clearly visible. When the traveler reaches this point in his westward journey he has been out of St. Paul only 48 or 50 hours, but when Lewis and Clark camped at the mouth of the Snake in October, 1805, they had been gone from St. Louis 18 months. At that time the ownership of Oregon Territory was uncertain and most of the men, if not the leaders themselves, believed that they were on foreign soil, as many entries in their journals refer to what they expected to do when they returned to the United States.

The first white man to explore the Columbia above the mouth of the Yakima (yak'i-ma), which enters a few miles west of Kennewick, was David Thompson, who made a trip down the river from Spokane in the year 1811.

Soon after passing Kennewick, a thriving town grown up in the center of a rich irrigated district on the south side of the river, the train crosses a branch line of the Oregon-Washington Railroad & Navigation Co. that runs up the valley of Yakima River as far as North Yakima.

After the dull, monotonous sagebrush plain above Pasco, the orchards and fields of green alfalfa are a pleasing sight. The fields first seen are those on the lowest bottom of the river, but as the railway reaches Vista it is running on a second terrace which is also irrigated and under a high state of cultivation.

PLATE XXIII.—MOUNT ADAMS, AS SEEN FROM THE NORTHERN PACIFIC TRAINS NEAR TOPPENISH, WASH. Cold and severe, the volcanic cone stands above the broad platform of the Cascade Range, which is an older feature. Photograph by Curtis & Miller, Seattle, Wash.

Although the Northern Pacific Railway in a general way follows the valley of Yakima River, it does not adhere closely to that stream, but cuts across country, thereby avoiding a big bend. Along this cut-off there is no irrigation and the country is desolate in the extreme. Before water was put upon the Yakima Valley it was a sagebrush plain just as extensive and just as desolate as the one here traversed. Water is the wizard that has transformed this desert into a land of blossoms, and as time goes on more and more of the waste places of the earth will be redeemed in this manner.

Not only is the surface of the country from Vista to Kiona monotonous, but the rocks, while interesting in so far as they record the past history of the region, are monotonous and poorly exposed. As explained on page 165, the rocks in this part of the valley consist of sandstone and shale formed from sediment laid down in lakes or on the surface of the land, interspersed with great sheets of lava (basalt) that covered most of the country. The lava was not poured out in a single flow, but the entire region is underlain by a succession of lava sheets. The shale and sandstone are soft and in only a few places show at the surface, but the outcrops of the sheets of basalt are marked by dark ledges along the hill slopes and the streams of rock fragments that descend from them.

FIGURE 35.—Section of Yakima Valley east of Prosser, Wash., a valley within a valley.

At Kiona the railway approaches Yakima River, and just after passing the station the traveler can obtain a good view down the valley, which includes well-cultivated farms and the bridge of the Oregon-Washington Railroad.

A short distance west of Kiona the valley is much restricted and all irrigation ceases. The river is bordered by rugged walls of basalt, a good view of which can be obtained from milepost 31 by looking back from the rear of the train. From this point of vantage it will be seen that the valley is not smooth and regular, sloping gently from the tops of the ridges to the river bank, but that it is compound, consisting of a rather broad outer or upper valley and an inner rocky gorge cut in the floor of the large valley. The shape of the valley is represented by the accompanying diagram (fig. 35), in which the outer broad valley is represented by the section ABC and the inner valley by the sharp cut at D. Usually such an arrangement is considered as indicative of two periods of valley cutting under somewhat different conditions, but here the forms have not been studied with sufficient care to make a determination possible. There is so great a difference in the hardness of the basalt and the soft sandstone associated with it that the inner valley may be due to a harder and much more massive bed of basalt near the bottom and not to different conditions of erosion.

About Prosser there is a large area of land under irrigation and in a high state of cultivation. It is a pleasing change from the dark or dull-gray color of the barren areas to the brilliant green of the fields of alfalfa, grass, or oats; from the stunted vegetation of the sagebrush plains to the thriving orchards which stretch away in the distance almost as far as the eye can see. It is no less pleasing to pass from the dry plains of the sun-scorched desert, where clouds of dust fill the air, to a land where running water is seen in every irrigation ditch and the land is so covered with rich vegetation that there seems no chance for it to become dry and parched.¹

---

¹The Yakima Valley has been aptly characterized as "Washington's vale of plenty." It is a region of small farms intensively cultivated and contains some of the most valuable agricultural lands in the world. Its farm homes are attractive, and in variety of crops and profitable yields it ranks favorably with southern California. A number of lakes on the headwaters of the streams of the Yakima drainage basin are being converted into storage reservoirs, and it is estimated that when the work is completed the water supply will be sufficient to irrigate about 500,000 acres. The land lies in a succession of valleys, and its reclamation will be accomplished by units. At the present time two units are practically completed—the Tieton, embracing approximately 34,700 acres near North Yakima, and the Sunnyside, covering about 100,000 acres some 6 miles below.

This valley is the home of the big red apple, and its fruit lands range in value from $300 to $1,200 an acre. The soil consists of volcanic ash and gravel. Hop and vegetable growers vie with the neighboring fruit growers, and forage crops and dairying are also very profitable. The cost of water right on the Sunnyside unit is $52 an acre, and on the Tieton unit $93 an acre. The Government land has all been filed upon, and farms can be acquired now only by purchase from private owners.

---

The railway runs some distance back from the river through irrigated fields, but gradually climbs to a terrace which shows on the left about a mile beyond Byron. This terrace is doubtless built of the soft material washed into the valley by the streams, but the amount of such material is variable, as the basalt appears at railway level in a number of places. On a clear day the high peaks of the Cascade Range, 100 miles away, can be seen from the vicinity of Pasco, but the distance is so great that at first sight the traveler may be disappointed in them. A better view can be obtained near milepost 58, 6 miles beyond Mabton, but even from this place the peaks are not as striking objects as they are from the region about Toppenish, farther northwest.