History of the Yakima Valley, Washington; comprising Yakima, Kittitas, and Benton Counties, Vol. I, Part 3

Author: Lyman, William Denison, 1852-1920
Publication date: 1919
Publisher: [Chicago] S.J. Clarke
Number of Pages: 1134

USA > Washington > Benton County > History of the Yakima Valley, Washington; comprising Yakima, Kittitas, and Benton Counties, Vol. I > Part 3
USA > Washington > Kittitas County > History of the Yakima Valley, Washington; comprising Yakima, Kittitas, and Benton Counties, Vol. I > Part 3
USA > Washington > Yakima County > History of the Yakima Valley, Washington; comprising Yakima, Kittitas, and Benton Counties, Vol. I > Part 3

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But then comes a fifth zone, the last, the zone of the Arctic. This is the zone of the snow-cap. The glaciers are now below. All life has ceased. The grade has ever steepened, till now it is forty degrees or more. The snow is hummocked and granulated. Here is where part of the climbers begin to stop. Legs and lungs fail. Camp looks exceedingly good down there at the verge of the forests. They feel as though they had lost nothing on the summit worth going up for. A nausea, mountain sickness, attacks some. Nosebleed attacks others. Things look serious. Icy mists sometimes begin to swirl around the presumptuous climbers. Frost gathers on hair and mustache and eyebrows. The unaccustomed or the less ambitious or weaker lose heart and bid the rest go on, for they will turn toward a more summer-like clime. Generally about half an ordinary party drop out at this beginning of the Arctic zone. But the rest shout "Excelsior," take a firmer grasp of alpenstock, stamp feet more vehemently into the snow, and with dogged perseverance move step by step up the final height. Inch by inch, usually in the teeth of a biting gale, leaning for- ward, and panting heavily, they force the upward way. And victory at last! There comes a time when we are on the topmost pinnacle, and there is nothing above us but the storms and sun. And then what elation! Nothing seems quite to equal the pure delight of such a triumph of lungs and legs and heart and will.

But the reader will not be content with a description of the existing phys- ical features of this land. He will wish to know something of the processes by which all this came to pass, something of its geological history. Part of that geological record is obvious almost on the face of it. We have already spoken of the curious alternations of level valleys and separating ridges, with the gaps through which the rivers pass and by which one valley connects with another. One can hardly view those features of Yakima topography without framing the conception that each one of those level valleys was once covered by water and that there was a series of great lakes where now the orchards and alfalfa fields of the Yakima provide food for men and beasts. This conception of the era of lakes calls to mind one of the finest of the many fine myths which the Yakima and Klickitat Indians have passed on to their successors. This is the story of the great beaver of Lake Keechelus. This story has been told in various ways. Dr. G. B. Kuykendall of Pomeroy, formerly physician at Fort Simcoe on the Indian Reservation, has narrated it in the history of the Pacific

HISTORY OF YAKIMA VALLEY

Northwest. A. J. Splawn gives it a place in his graphic and valuable book on "Kamiakin, the Last Hero of the Yakimas." The author has heard it from Frank Olney of Toppenish, one of the best authorities on all matters relating to Indian life. Like most Indian myths this story of the beaver varies some- what, but in substance is to the effect that in the times of the Wateetash (ani- mal people before the coming of men) there was a monstrous beaver, Wish- poosh, in the lakes which are now at the head of the Yakima. At that time, however, there was no river and the lakes were much larger than now. Wish- poosh was so destructive that Speelyi, the Coyote god of the Klickitats and Yakimas, determined to destroy him and attacked him with his wooden spear, but only wounded him. In his mad fury Wishpoosh tore up the trees and living creatures along the shore of the lake and finally tore out the bank of the lake itself, letting the great floods of water down into what we now call the Kittitas Valley, making of it a great lake. Not content with this the raging monster tore a passage way through the Umptanum Gap, and the accumulated floods passed on to fill the Selah and Wenas, but for a time were restrained by the ridge at what is now Selah Gap. That, however, soon gave way and the larger flats of the Ahtanum, and Moxee became in turn the reservoir of a new lake. Union Gap (Pahotacute), or rather the Ahtanum ridge at that point, still held back the waters for a time, but at last gave way before the furious onslaughts of Wishpoosh. Then there was a big lake sure enough. For now the water covered the whole area of the Simcoe, Toppenish and lower Yakima, clear across where the Columbia now is and even far on toward Walla Walla. Some versions of the story carry the big beaver through the Umatilla highlands or Wallula Gateway and then through the Cascade Mountain to the ocean. Ac- cording to Frank Olney, who is probably the best authority, Speelyi finally overpowered Wishpoosh at the point where the Yakima now joins the Colum- bia, and there cut up the monster and from his remains created the various Indian tribes. The fragments of the head were thrown up toward the source of the river, Speelyi declaring that the Indians there would become great in power and intelligence and ultimately be white and rule the other tribes. The legs and chest were thrown into the middle section with the declaration that they would be great as runners and fighters but would be inferior to the upper tribes. The refuse was cast down the river and from them were fashioned the lower and weaker tribes. Meanwhile the lakes had disappeared, the river had come into existence, the various gaps remained as shaped by Wishpoosh, the vast level plains had become visible above the waters,-and the Yakima Valley, as we know it, was an established fact. Chief Stwires (Rev. George Waters), a Klickitat Indian well known to all old timers in Yakima, told the author an interesting collateral story of the Yakima floods, to this effect. About a thousand years ago the Columbia River was simply a small stream and the Kittitas and Simcoe valleys were covered with water. One day a certain young man of the Klickitat tribe got lost in the mountains and finally made his way to the summit of Mount Adams (Pahtou). That was a feat rarely performed, for the natives have always had superstitions about the snow-peaks. But this young brave reached the summit and there he discovered a great lake on top. At that time also an earthquake caused the "Tomanowas Bridge" of the Colum-

HISTORY OF YAKIMA VALLEY

bia River to fall, the lake on Mount Adams broke loose and tore down the whole east side of the mountain, causing the stupendous precipice now seen there, and the Kittitas and Simcoe lakes were drained. As a result of this the Yakima River came into existence, and the Columbia become the mighty river that it now is.

Chief Stwires had these and similar stories from his mother. One curious feature of the Simcoe Lake story as related by Stwires is to the effect that there were whales in the lake. C. E. Rusk of Yakima told the author that he imag- ined that the whale story might have developed from the fact that at points near Kiona and Prosser in the lower valley mastodon bones have been found.

We are not exactly in the domain of science in this part of the chapter, but it is worth remembering that the Indians, like all primitive people, lived close to "nature's heart," were great observers, and underneath the fantastic details of some of their stories had a general basis of an accurate conception of the physical changes of the earth. All the indications point to the action of water through alternating floods and lakes in the creation of the peculiar topog- raphy of the country.

The geological history of the Yakima Valley, like that of other parts of this new land, must necessarily wait for fuller research to give it anything like com- pleteness. General outlines, however, have been given it from the investigations of government and state geologists, from the engineers of the Reclamation Service, and from the observations of prospectors, of whom there were many in the early mining days when the search for the precious metals engrossed the energies of most of the explorers. There have been a few individual stu- dents of high scientific intelligence to whom we owe general news of the order of evolution of this region.

The first real student of geology in the northwest was Prof. Thomas Condon, for a number of years a Congregational clergyman at The Dalles, and then for many years one of the faculty of the Oregon State University at Eugene. Professor Condon published in 1902, a fascinating little book, "The Two Islands," in which he sets forth certain general conclusions of great inter- est in the history of the Northwest. The fundamental proposition on which this book is based is that there were two islands as the oldest land in all this region, the Siskiyou and the Shoshone. In the book are given valuable details about the fossil remains and the rock formations upon which the author bases his conclusions. Another of his general expositions is that in the subsequent gradual evolution of the continent there were three vast seas imprisoned by the rising lands in the regions from the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Ocean. The southernmost of these was ultimately drained by the Colorado River. The second was the Utah Basin, and it found no outlet, but gradually disappeared by evaporation, leaving Great Salt Lake of the present as an evidence of the process. The third, much larger than either of the others, was enclosed by gradual successive elevations of the Cascade Mountains to be drained in time by the Columbia River. Professor Condon's conception of the agency of the Cascade Mountains in the history of the region which includes the Yakima may be found in the following excerpt from the "Two Islands:" "Thus far our narrative has had to do with occurrences apparently local and apparently

HISTORY OF YAKIMA VALLEY

disassociated from facts and events that shaped the history of the rest of the world. Our story now needs to take on its relations to this wider circle of changes, the geographical progress of other regions.

"The two islands in mid ocean and the muddy or sandy deposits along , their respective shore lines were worked by the same ocean, receiving into their deposits the remains of the same sea life, and were affected alike by the heat and pressure of their vast accumulations of the wear and the wash of older things. Nothing of all this tended to make these islands unlike, and so their growth was treated as the growth of twin sisters. The divergence in their records commenced with the growth of the Cascade barrier between them, and of the early history of this and its special bearing on the development of the Shoshone Island, careful note has been attempted.

"At a later period in its history, this barrier character took another form. From a mere water barrier to a range of hills, and still later to a vast range of mountains, increased elevation lifted it into an atmospheric agency quite as im- portant as its previous marine one, for when it reached the altitude of a moun- tain range it excluded the moist, warm current of the Pacific Ocean and thus surrendered the interior to the dry, cold winds of the continent eastward.

"Yet another of these barrier functions remains to be ascribed to the Cas- cade Range. Its uplift along the coast of Alaska made it a barrier to the flow eastward of the Japan current of the ocean.

"The present extended plains from Alaska to Baffin's Bay would warrant the conclusion that before the elevation of the Cascade barrier at Alaska, the Japan current must have flowed over those stretches of low country on its way northward.

"The effect of this, as previously noted, would be to sweep away all accumu- lations of snow and ice in that region; in other words, would prevent accumu- lations of snow and ice between our island of Shoshone and the Arctic Circle, a condition of things which would be very effective in modifying the climate of the region we are describing.

"Yet such an inflow of a vast tropical river from the ocean itself must have existed till turned aside by the upfold of this Cascade barrier along the coast of Alaska.

"To say that this great upfold of the earth kept on increasing in height and breadth through the early and middle Tertiary times, would tend to obscure the strong line of the history, for it was the force that lifted this Cascade dyke into the Cascade range of hills, and these in turn into the Cascade range of mountains. It was the epochs of these successive upfolds that marked off into time periods the Eocene or early Tertiary, the Miocene or middle Tertiary, and the Pliocene or latest Tertiary.

But there is still a wider view of its world relations than this one of the Pacific slope; for while this Cascade barrier was making a geographical sepa- ration between our two islands of the Pacific, there was an extension of the Gulf of Mexico northward into what is now British America, covering much of the region now occupied by the Rocky Mountains. The same crumpling process that elevated the Cascade barrier by a like process of elevation, closed this American Mediterranean to the ocean, and also added to the height and

HISTORY OF YAKIMA VALLEY

breadth of the already begun upfold of the Rocky Mountains. This change was closely followed by the conversion of the inclosed waters of the region from salt, through brackish, to fresh waters.

"And yet a still wider relationship may be mentioned. Up to the time when the Cascade barrier was separating our Pacific Islands, western Europe, from. the British Islands to the Black Sea, was covered by a deep ocean over whose bed had been slowly deposited the cast-off calcareous shells of a Protozoan. animal, the Globigerina. This accumulation of life-remains, hundreds of feet in thickness and extending over a length of six hundred miles, was brought to- a close by the elevation of the sea bed, its calcareous sediment to be known in after times as the chalk beds of Europe.

"Now this shrinking and the resulting crumpling of the surface seen in this light, becomes a world fact; its manifestation in the Cascade barrier, its other manifestation along the line of the Rocky Mountains, and the still further one in the elevation of the chalk beds of Europe, are but three links in the one chain of force. It is this European link that gives its name to the epoch, the Cretaceous (meaning chalk), and the close of this period, a time of great change, a revolution in the geological history, marks the passing away of the older forms of life and the introduction of the newer forms of both plants and animals. To accomplish this result the great types of life at this time went through rapid changes.

"The dominant forms of vertebrate life of the Cretaceous period of land and sea, were reptilian, the dominant forms of the new period were mammalian.

"A like radical change occurred at this time among the plants, as the types that mark the forests of today were not introduced till after the close of the- Cretaceous. In the light of these facts there is a striking fitness in the name geologists have given the period that follows the Cretaceous. They call it the Eocene-the dawn of the recent.

"When the violence that accompanied the Cretaceous revolution passed away, quiet was restored and life, land life, took its new tendency on our Shos- hone Island."

It is interesting to note in connection with Professor Condon's "Two- Islands" that Prof. Henry Landes of the University of Washington, state. geol- ogist, believes that there was a third island perhaps antedating the Siskiyou and Shoshone and composing probably the oldest land in the Northwest. This was the region of the Methow and Chelan and southward from them. In general terms it may be said that the Methow and Chelan regions are of metamorphic rock, granitic, porphyritic, and andesite, while south of these to the Sierras, the Cascade Range and its various spurs are mainly of various forms of igneous. rock, lava, basalt and traehyte. The vast snow peaks beginning with Baker (which ought to be Kulshan, Great White Watcher) and Shuksan near the Canadian line, and including Glacier Peak, Stuart, Rainier (Takhoma), St. Helens and Adams, with many lesser ones in the state of Washington, and an equal number of similar ones in Oregon, are entirely volcanic, heaved up through the original crust of the earth by stupendous volcanic and seismic energy.

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A general view of the geology of the Yakima was prepared by Miss Ruth Johnson of the Yakima High School and published in one of the local papers. As a valuable brief contribution to the subject we are incorporating this into our work at this point. We derive this from a Yakima paper with this introduc- tion :

GEOLOGY OF THE YAKIMA VALLEY.

(The following paper was prepared and read at a recent meeting of the Yakima Association of Collegiate Alumna, by Miss Ruth Johnson of the High School faculty, and was so much enjoyed and the facts presented were deemed so important that it was requested for publication .- Ed.)

In order to adequately explain the Geology of the Yakima Valley, it is first necessary that a few general statements in regard to the geological history of this country should be made. Passing over the ancient foundation of Archean rock and skirting of subsequent sedimentation that was built around it as well as intervening country that connects the more closely worked out sec- tions to the eastward, we find ourselves interested in more truly western struc- tures in British Columbia and Sierra Navadas. Showing records of as early a time as the Paleozoic, the second well recognized era in the geologic scale of time, there are rocks here that, according to George Otis Smith, "are the oldest in the Northern Cascades," and he also records the fact that they show signs of volcanic action.

In this we might trace the earliest proofs of the great stress of uplift that was for the next two eras to keep the whole middle western edge of the con- tinent oscillating, now above and now below water level.

Rocks of the Cretaceous period are quite definitely located and in the sifting of Mr. Condon's "Two Islands" there remain the undisputed facts of fossils of that period as having been located farther west than any of like age up to that time. It is of interest that through Mr. Condon's efforts the earliest explorations in search of fossil material were made, and such expeditions as that of Yale under orders from Professor Marsh in 1876, the resulting speci- mens of which, still comparatively unknown, are preserved in the recesses of Peabody Museum at New Haven.

After the placing of the sediments which we now label as Cretaceous and parallel in age with the great chalk foundations of other continents, there seems to have come a great movement of lifting and folding which continued, studded with granite intrusions and other signs of igneous activity until what may be called the parent Cascade Mountains were lifted above the waters and erosion, with all its wearing powers, began.

With the opening of the Tertiary period then we have a range of moun- tains, not necessarily high, but rugged, in about the same position as the Cas- cades of to-day, with a long trough-like estuary reaching in from the north over what is now the Puget Sound country. This water lapped up much farther than the present waters do, and it is a question whether or not the most far reaching of these tongues of water reached the large bodies of water that were to the east of the new raised ridge of mountains.

HISTORY OF YAKIMA VALLEY

These early Tertiary, or more properly speaking Eocene, waters are re- sponsible for all the coal in our state and with the realization that coal bed foun- dation demands long periods of shallow water growth coupled with rapid sedi- mentation to seal away the treasures of the forests for our use we can readily understand what must have been the story of that period.

Following this the Neocene basalt flows occurred, with such a wide spread- ing field of action that some buttes north and east of Walla Walla were almost covered and the Snake River that we know was forced to cut its way out and through ten separate flows, the same flows of lava that may be readily seen between Ellensburg and Yakima in the canon.

With the close of the lava flow came a deformation or slight tilting and with it of course, erosion until a level plain was formed upon the face of which rivers turned and twisted in an effort to empty their rapidly ponding waters into the sea. This properly is said to conclude the Miocene period as well as the career of the mountains already designated as the early Cascades.

The main division of Tertiary time, however, does not end until another uplift furnishes the force to lift this level plain and with a combination of mountain building forces make possible our present Cascade Range.

The erosion of this peneplain or level and elevated highland is even now continuing and it is the broken stretches of its flat top that we can trace against the blue sky line to the west.

Turning to a closer study of the Yakima Valley. The earliest rocks in this section are to be found, according to Professor Saunders, in the Easton schists and other strata as the Peshastin and Hawkins formations. These are found in the mountainous western portion of the Yakima Basin, and are instru- mental in causing a very rugged topography.

IN THE EOCENE PERIOD.

The mountains to the west were eroded rapidly and the resulting material deposited as the Swauk formation between Ellensburg and Thorp and the Naches formation showing a white streak in the hills north of Naches City. Says W. von Winkel in Water Supply, Paper No. 339, U. S. G. S. "Upper Yakima River Valley heads, now at 2458 feet, expose Pre-Eocene schists, slates, serpentines, and volcanic rocks, Eocene sandstones, conglomerate, shales, and basalts, and in places Neocene and later basalts.

Above Ellensburg the river crosses an exposure of Neocene basalt and enters the later Tertiary sedimentary deposits known as Ellensburg formation and in its lower course flows across basalt and sandstone.

In the course of this period these layers of sediment were uplifted and eroded before the first of the long series of lava flows made its appearance. This was a basic lava, called Teanaway basalt which in places attained a thick- ness of more than 5,000 feet. There were fissures in the sandstone, and ande- site and rhyolite were also a part of this flow.

Following this another period of weathering and erosion comes with its destructive work, and well it is that geology takes small count of time as it is actually measured in years else we could not so glibly follow these centuries of

(4)

HISTORY OF YAKIMA VALLEY

erosion and the activity of leveling forces with the idea of sinking and subse- quent sedimentation. This time about 3,000 to 3,500 feet of sandstone and schists were deposited in the fresh water ponded here and the Roslyn coal is the proof of a most abundant vegetation.

Just south of Yakima River are the Manastash beds, similar to Swauk though probably younger than the coal beds. The era of the Eocene then closed as far as the Yakima Valley was concerned with a break in the geologic record due to uplift and erosion, and that break we call an unconformity. Following this we have the Yakima basalt ranging in thickness from 200 to 2,500 feet and we know that the sheet type of field is largely due to the fact that the great floods were forced up through conduits in a manner best comparable to the oozing of juice when a rhubarb pie is in process of baking, not to say running over. It is generally conceded that the basalt came to surface through great fissures of considerable linear extent rather than volcanic vents, for with basalt's low melting point it would flow long distances before cooling. There are ne indications of true volcanoes on the Ellensburg quadrangle.

G. O. Smith speaks of ten separate flows; and when one considers that be- tween each flow enough time elapsed so that the lava cooled, rock weathered and eroded enough to form a footing for the great trees the remains of which we now find, we gain a little broader idea of geologic time. Russell in his analysis of the lava gives the real reason for the soil's agricultural richness when he says it is made up of 46 to 47 per cent Si and 11-22 per cent. Al with lime, magnesia, potash and phosphoric acid.

About the middle of the Neocene period the basaltic flows ceased and the area having sunk, doubtless because of the weight of the lava-a basin was formed. Before we go further, however, it is best to stop to realize that the Columbia lava flows cover all of southern Idaho, eastern Oregon and extend into California, covering nearly 250,000 square miles, in places 4,000 feet thick and making the largest lava flow in the world.

In the northwestern part of the basin sedimentation was contemporary with the lava flows and after this building of future soils had been carried on to what we call the Ellensburg formation that reaches a total height of 1,569.5 feet north of Naches City. This series of layers shows such a mixture of acidic, volcanic ash and sediment that a new volcanic activity to the west- ward is definitely proved and that too of a more acidic type. This layer is the one which Dall and Weaver correlate with the Massall beds of John Day in Oregon and it is to them that we may look for proofs of the life that existed at that time.

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History of the Yakima Valley, Washington; comprising Yakima, Kittitas, and Benton Counties, Vol. I, Part 3

Author: Lyman, William Denison, 1852-1920 Publication date: 1919 Publisher: [Chicago] S.J. Clarke Number of Pages: 1134

Author: Lyman, William Denison, 1852-1920
Publication date: 1919
Publisher: [Chicago] S.J. Clarke
Number of Pages: 1134