People

J Harlen Bretz, 1882-1981
A high school teacher turned geology professor, J Harlen Bretz was fascinated with the glacial geology of the Puget Sound. He became an expert on the features of stream and glacial erosion and began field research in the Channeled Scabland of eastern Washington in
1922. Challenging common beliefs, Bretz believed that the Channeled Scabland was formed not by ordinary stream erosion but by cataclysmic floods. What eluded him, though, was the source of the floods.

 

Joseph Pardee, 1871-1960
Joseph Pardee, a geologist with the US Geological Survey, proposed a source for Bretz’s catastrophic floods. As he studied the Channeled Scabland and the intermountain basins of Montana in 1910, he found high water marks near Missoula, Montana—evidence of a large glacial lake. Later, in the Camas Prairie of northwestern Montana, he discovered giant ripple marks of sediment made by powerful currents flowing over the bottom of ancient Glacial Lake Missoula. Like Bretz, Pardee’s discoveries played a key role in understanding the story of the Ice Age Floods.