Museums 101: Geology in the Hanford Reach (photo diary)

by Ojibwa for Museums

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Monday, Nov. 04, 2019 Monday, Nov. 04, 2019 at 8:30:03am PST

The Hanford Reach is the last non-tidal, free-flowing section of the Columbia River. The Reach Museum opened in 2014 in Richland, Washington. The Museum focuses on the Hanford Reach area with exhibits on the region’s geology, wildlife, Native American history, American settlement, the Manhattan project (developing the atomic bomb), and recent environmental and conservation concerns. Shown below are some of the exhibits explaining the area’s geology.

photo P1070652_zps50lcudqz.jpg — The map shown above shows the impact of Ice Age glacial lakes.

According to the display:

“As recently as 15,000 to 12,000 years ago, tremendous, nearly unimaginable floods scoured channels, back-flushed river and ponded temporary lakes across almost 16,000 square miles of the Pacific Northwest. The evidence for dozens of these cataclysms during the latest glacial episode appears in the distinctive geologic record of Montana, Idaho, Washington and Oregon.”

According to the display:

“Imagine molten lava spewing from deep cracks in the Earth’s surface and covering the land from western Idaho to the Pacific. Hundreds of lava flows erupted periodically between 17 million and 6 million years ago. Today, cooled lava (basalt) forms a basin stretching from the Bitterroot Mountains to the Cascades.”