I LOVE THE HONOR AND RESPECT YOU GIVE TO J. HARLEN BRETZ HERE. This video came up as I was walking in the ancient granite Southern Oklahoma Aulacogen of the Wichita Mountains in SW Oklahoma. I was in tears listening! We can each hope to be revered after we're gone to have a scholar literally pick up our Work and bring it to the masses again. STUNNING. APPRECIATED. Simply Lovely, Nick.
“The end!” Thank you for making my Sunday. I can’t help to go out into the mountains of Arizona and apply the knowledge you are sharing with the world. Bretz was terrific. Like you say a man decades ahead of his time. You Nick are the same to all of us individuals across the globe willing to learn!! Thank you so much for taking the time to rekindle our fire of learning. Sincerely Mark Lambert, Sun Lakes AZ (CWU Alumni class of 1989)
Oh this was fun, I forgot how much I loved your backyard videos! It really is intriguing to think of Bretze mapping on foot. Just the high school days in the Puget Sound are amazing, the next part with glacier erratics, I lived in White Salmon and have hiked and found the river cobbles of Quartzite and the boulders of granite.
I discovered and then watched and enjoyed your presentations over the last few years. I'm 77 and live in St Paul Mn and enjoy learning about Geology. I sometimes discuss what I have just learned with my Wife. She a history major took Geology as her required science elective back in 67 and is fond of saying how her geology professor stated that continental drift was a screw ball idea and not accepted by him or main stream geology. She likes to laugh at what has now come to pass. That brought up what she recently read about other geology theories that where dismissed like the ice age floods. That led me to research when the floods were first theorized and by who. I did that just today and discovered it was J Harlen Bretz. That made me wonder about that story. Then tonight I watched your presentation. It just answered all my questions about him. Thank you so much. What a marvelous coincidence in what I was researching. By the way in that research I read a 2008 Northwest Geology Society Field trip .pdf about a trip to the area and in it's into it states about the 100 or more floods during the recent ice age but also flood that occurred perhaps every 100,000 years for perhaps the last million years. I expect you know this paper and perhaps were even on this field trip. But in case you don't know here is the link web.gps.caltech.edu/~mpl/Ge121a_Scablands/Ice_Age_Floods.pdf. I know your are talking about that subject recently. Thank you Nick for all that you do on the net. Dale Eason
Just starting Nick on another venue. Had to open my phone to get here and say hello and thanks as always for continuing on this path to understanding what we're walking around on and the absolute magnificence of the creation.
How is Bretz manage to make such detailed maps one wonders? Background in cartography? But to take even current maps and add geologic overlays over that amount of area is truly amazing.
Nick, thanks so much for taking the time to enlighten the world on ice age geology. You have a talent for teaching. I always look forward to seeing what you produce next. Keep it up. CM
I thoroughly enjoy your lectures. I am a retired HS Science teacher and Geologist who came to geology late in my career. I am in Ohio and am an east of the Mississippi Geologist. KEEP UP THE GREAT WORK.
The best part the professor's RU-vid presentations is that every time I watch one I learn something. The next best thing is watching him get excited about what he's teaching! Thank you so much!!
Yell on Rockman, Yell on!... Listening to your is the next best thing to being there... I can only imagine how may kids, you have turned in to rockmen and women of the future....Thank You
There were many more when I was a kid, but occasionally when traveling across the Columbia basin you will still see the remnants of a homestead that has been long abandoned. It can break your heart thinking of the dreams that died, and the number of people that worked themselves to death, trying to eke out a living in such an inhospitable area. These early settlers arrived during a historic 30 year wet era where areas such as Othello had been receiving 10” to 15” of annual rainfall. However, in 1918 the rainfall returned to normal, crops were failing, livestock was starving, and settlers did not realize that the wet era had been the anomaly, and this was not a short term drought. One can only imagine how many more years the farming family Bretz came across held out hope for the rains to arrive.
Thanks so much for new thoughts on the ice age floods! This re-examination of the Bretz ideas is exciting! Just when you think you have it figured out, a whole new approach rears its head, and it’s so exciting!
What a great teacher! i was a college/university student during the 60s and 70s in Ohio and Indiana. There talk of mile-thick ice sheets were routine. But on a graduate field trip the scab lands, (1974), the discussion of how it came to be was "we don't know." Lake Missoula and the potential of massive floods weren't accepted because "the present is the key to the past." Speculated floods so massive and catastrophic went against "uniformitarianism" and that just wasn't accepted. Nice to see a "different" idea has now been accepted, but the lesson remains though it is seldom discussed. Bretz might put it: "Momentary catastrophism is to be expected. Just as tornadoes traverse the atmosphere that do not represent the norm but leave a wake of destruction, so too the forces of geology."
Thank you for sharing your story about Professor Bretz. Quite a hero of the age of geological exploration. I am glad to hear that he was honored at last for such tremendous energy and earnest work. It would have been nicer still if Grand Coulee Dam should have been named after him, considering that Nature could scarcely have prepared finer ground for it. With gravel nearby.
Remarkable man, if not somewhat eccentric. Imagine what one thought of this man and his student wondering around a very sparsely populated land. Good job professor and thank you ALL stay safe
Excellent! J Harlan Beers was certainly an interesting individual and his writing is more poetry than scientific prose. Thank you for sharing this man with us.
I bought Bretz “The Grand Coulee” book a little over 2 1/2 years ago in a little Spokane book store for a very special person. I still have it and after your last video I gave it a read and his story is amazing. It really makes you sit and think what could have really happened so long ago.
Thanks for sharing this today. I was thrilled by seeing the sterioptigan (sp). My grandfather graduated from medical school in Missouri in 1910. He paid his way through medical school selling the "machines" and published slides. He continued for a number of years to make his own slides. He became an osteopath in Central Illinois. I still have the machine and 2 boxes of slides. In grade school in the 50s i was seeing double from astigmatism and I know now undiagnosed dyslexia. My mom showed the machine to the eye doctor. Using and learning to focus the images with it became part of the eye exercises I was required to do daily. Those slides you showed are a real treasure! I'm finding this fascinating not only for the geology but also the history.
Wowed to listen to you Nick talking about Bretz again!😃💗✨ You were already deep in the thoughts about the floods that happened in the Spoken glaciation time then! Bret's exploration and understanding of the channeled scablands are getting clearer to me every time you open your mouth!😄😃✨💗It was super fun to revisit the video!! YES, someone should make a map of the Spoken glaciation time, which would be more than 20, 000 plus years ago!! One of those computer simulations might do wonders?? Hmmm...😏
I was delighted that you re-posted this video again today - it has a different perspective for me now that I have done the Thomas Large/ Bretz research. It struck me today listening to this for the third time now, just how much Bretz and Thomas Large had in common, and now that I have read the Bretz papers from the 1920's that you posted last week I can see that Bretz directly referenced (footnoted) the Thomas Large SCIENCE paper, so he did acknowledge the observations and contribution that Large made. I sure hope that you received all the news clippings that I sent you this morning! I think you will find some interesting tidbits. Looking forward to more ice age stuff this summer!!! Thank you Nick for revisiting the channeled scablands with fresh eyes.
Nick, it warms my heart when you 'get excited"! You're on fire, and you've rekindled an interest in my local geology :-). I always got stuck on the arcane geochemistry nomenclature. I've spent the majority of my days in southern Connecticut just 14 miles north of a limb of the Wisconsonian terminal moraine called Long Island, NY. My childhood home was near a wetland on an esker of sharp coarse red sand on which I could as a boy with shovel in hand sink a hole so deep that I couldn't get out without excavating a ramp. There are areas a few miles north of that which have had this coarse sand measured at 300-400 feet thick! Thank you once more for a wonderfully informative and animated sketch of this scientific maverick❤
Want to know the history about the scablands and how they came to be? You have to start with the man J Harlen Bretz. Thanks for summing up his story professor , one we all need to know but never really learned about his observations and papers on Eastern Washington state geology. Stubborn and persistent about what he found ,wrote and explained through the decades when he was alive. US 2 across Washington state should be named after him! Great video sir!
Nick.....! Thanks for all your work. I truly enjoy your presentation. Your enthusiasm for you subject is infectious. It is very nice to see that someone with your skill at making this information interesting and entertaining is able to give Mr. Bretz the credit he was due. So often great thinkers and innovators go unheralded.
Excellent video again! The railroad surveyors notes plans would provide an interesting angle to this story. Most all routes in the day took full advantage of ice age flood paths! The Milwaukee, 1907 travels right of ways mostly through flood created corridors/scablands/Rock lake Marengo (calcretes) on past Drumheller ch. Sentinal gap. The Sp&S Cheney Palouse tract Washtucna Kahlotus Devils canyon The Union Pacific basically mirrors the Sp&S except it travels the Palouse canyon meeting back up with the SP&S on the other side of the Snake river. My Dad ran many passenger train for the Milwaukee from Spokane to Cle Elum in the 1950’s…good chance he would have had Bretz along, train crews back in the day would have stopped pretty much anywhere if he would have asked. Again excellent video as an engineer traveling these same routes and looking at them first had for years I am still amazed at the size and the huge amounts of gravel deposited along the way! Maybe one day I can catch you in the field on a pop up! Thanks
I am thrilled by the return of the backyard lectures! There is a certain coziness that draws me in to listen with more attentiveness than a standard lecture will. Thanks for sharing this interesting story of discovery! Glenn
I live in the Olympia area and drive by a large gravel pit that sits adjacent to I-5. The depth of the gravel deposits are at least 100 feet deep. The local cement company has property on both sides of the freeway and uses one dug out pit for it’s concrete plant and the other side is for the mining of aggregates. It’s been fascinating seeing how the materials have been removed.
TYSM COVID weirdness, found you, Nick, and Geology likely bc I was browsing around for something inspiring to distract me from current madness, and wow. Now I celebrate J Harlen Bretz Day (Sept 2nd) like a Pop music groupie. Much ❤ to you for the meaningful hours, the new vocabulary and the appreciation of my long ago birth state!
I couldn't watch this yesterday, but it certainly was great to view with Monday morning coffee! Thank you for reposting this, Nick! I note your comment about Bretz showing glacial ice covering Spokane as being in error...as contrasted to your current rethinking of how the "original" coulees were formed. I hope you repost the video that followed this one! (If not I know where to find it!) Have a good day!
We are very thrilled that you are pursuing the Bretz Spokane floods. My wife and I have walked Moses Coulee from East end, to Douglas Creek, to THE BLM trail. We think he was correct. Beautiful maps, all his foot work, and his brilliant mind made the connection. Is there a way to find fresh water pulses in the marine sediments?
Thank You Nick! Just thinking of what they had to walk in to get around got me going, and just one little light to know they were back to a some what civilization. WOW! It would be a whole story within itself to know how he got the photos.
Love your lessons!! I've gone back and watched a bunch of your early lectures at the college. Back in the mid 70s I read Geology Illustrated by John Shelton for the first time, and was intrigued by his mention of the Ice Age Floods. I have since read the same book five or six times. I don't know where I heard about the book Bretz's Flood, but I believe it was in the 90s?? I read it twice. And when I visited my sister and bro in law in Seattle, we went camping at Sun Lakes SP and explored all around, and went to the visitor center and saw the movie. And I tell you, if we get time travel before I die, I'm going to go watch the floods first thing!! I can check out dinosaurs after that. I'm still reading about geology--never had a class in it--and I'm also now interested in the Grand Canyon. Hmmm. So I guess I'm a dedicated amateur geologist, though not really very knowledgeable. So keep up the lectures--you and Shawn Willsey--and I can continue to learn about the subject, along with thousands of other viewers. WOOOHOOOOOOO! GREAT JOB!
Thanks Professor Zentner, for focusing on the good Bretz did and glossing over the controversy. Anyone who wants to can dig into Bretz's past and find dirt on his character, but none of that obviates the fact that he was a world-class geologist. His contributions to the field far outweigh his cantakerosity (is that a word? I guess it is now, my own pet neologism, lol). As usual, you never disappoint. Thanks for an intriguing and enthusiastic presentation of Bretz's scientific contributions!
How exciting! An amateur out done the professionals, but that is the case many times. Thanks for the passionate story with key highlights. Well done and looking forward for continuation of the geologic story.
Bravo! As you were presenting I was googling Bretz on the internet and scrolling and scrolling. I was particularly interested in the Puget lowlands map he made with his HS students. He might have passed through this area of Poulsbo I reside as I noticed a short shaded line from north to south just next to Liberty Bay. There are sizable granites being dug up around this area from construction work.
Might be informative to add, if possible, a text balloon at about 36:30 differentiating the Wisconsin vs Spokane ice sheets, and how the map shown at this point in the video likely shows Bretz's estimation of the extent of the earlier Spokane glaciation.
Excellent! Just excellent. This is a big part of the back story I've wondered about myself. One more example of (you'll forgive me, I hope) the non-practitioner or non-professional bringing a fresh, unorthodox view to a long-established set of beliefs. New eyes looking at an old story. It's straight out of Thomas Kuhn's "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions," and Bretz was, in fact, a geological heretic. As someone who tends toward the irreverent myself, I very much admire that about him, though I must admit that, like Nick, I'm not sure I'd enjoy his company at a back yard barbecue
Completely unrelated to your wonderful lectures... I saw your 'twin' in in Spfld, MO this week... was tempted to ask the man if he was related, but restrained myself... Have a good week.
I was just thinking, while watching your video that they are like a musical performance. We can look at Bach or Bretz and not have a clue about it. We watch your performance/interpretation and we can understand a work like Bretz, getting a sense of his basic ideas.
Thanks for opening my eyes in this regard. It is so easy (for me) to dismiss this type of work, given our more modern technology. As with other great geologists, he was able to get the bottom of things by actually going there and doing the work, a thing I really admire. ps You are doing it too! (by teaching us, even those much your elder!)
I love the history lesson here .Geology tells a history story. I love history and stories. I also love mysteries. There are a lot of Mysteries in Geology. I love solving mysteries by using clues and evidence .There are lots of clues and evidence .Finally there are sooo Many Mysteries yet to be solved you can get board and look at where you work These places are breath taking
Hi Nick, love the mini series. Reflecting on the big fold of the basalts in the visual from the previous video - the pictures in the dam info from the late 40s - that biggest fold is much older than the Wisconsin. Order of operations observed infer a big event from an earlier glaciation? Energizing to daydream… thanks!
Thank you Nick! Thank you for your excitement. Thank you for your hard work putting this together. Thank you for your open mind and gentle nature. Thank you for using modern tech to excite a old teacher/admin HS guy in Oklahoma. Thank you for reminding me of a trip I took long ago across these landscapes of grandeur and my imagination. I'm just a little jealous of the folks that live in the Pacific NW so thank you for your ability to transport me there. Maybe one day I'll travel to hear you speak in person and meet you! Looking forward to your next Bretz adventure. Buy the way I've thought for a while the current explanations of ice age floods wasn't telling the whole story and threw another person had heard of Bretz and thought he filled in some of the gaps! Keep up the good work!!!
Love the content, absolutely admire your energy. Been watching since 2020, and have tried to keep up. I have difficulty remembering the names and terms, but the concepts, ideas and overall information IS understood as a result of your Amazing presentation skills. Thank You from Avondale Arizona
My geology 101 Professor Dave Alt @ University of Montana--- we went out back door in class @ U/M & looked up @ Missoula flood shorelines on Mount Sentinel & Mount Jumbo; (mountains behind U/M). This was 1974 or 1975. Pretty easy to understand what the professor was telling us, looking up @ the cool evidence right before our eyes. What a classroom prop----The actual mountains--ha ha
I belong to the Cahokia Mounds Historical association and not only did the many mounds and Munks mound nearly get used as land fill, but another large mound in St Louis, under the new bridge now, was leveled for fill and history of the area lost. Hence the Seattle deposits lost history that can not be restored. What a loss.
Yer the best Nick, yer Dad would be proud of the stories you tell! Could the timeline of the Ice Age floods be teased out of the deposits at the mouth(ocean) of the Columbia via core samples ? Are the core samples sitting in a warehouse someplace already?
A smart guy with a pencil on foot, schooled everyone with modern satellites, terrain mapping, and Lidar technology. Sometimes thinking outside the box is more revealing then being trapped inside one.
As someone who's been through a variety of 'book learning' classes, as well as classes with practical experience, I have to agree with J Harlen Bretz perspective on one of the better teaching/learning experience. One of the issues with 'book learning' instruction methods is having too much confidence in the material in the book. It's always been a similar problem to the belief that if it's on the Internet it's true. One is not necessarily evidence of the other. And it's also not necesarily true that just because you can put your hands on it, that you understand what made it so. I know all too many people who can copy and paste solutions to problems that they find on Stack Exchange, yet still don't understand why what they cobbled together from parts does, what it does.
Geologist James Gilluly (Penrose Medal, 1958) one of his most vocal critics, after finally going to Palouse Falls reflected on his years of discrediting Bretz scablands catastrophic flooding theory, “How could anyone have been so wrong?” Bretz was awarded the Penrose Medal in 1979. 😎
Danny - thank you. I've been wanting to find out who said that famous quote, when and where. If you have a source for your info I would appreciate you emailing it to me. Thanks.
For those who may be interested, Google: james gilluly how could anyone be so wrong All references are, in my estimation, anecdotal. Who heard it said or if in fact Gilluly put his comment in writing - I don’t know.
Thanks Nick, great show. Been fooling you in the classroom for a bit now. Really enjoyed you going into the history of Bretz. How do you get on with Randell ? Hope you two don’t clash on these floods and get on like a house on fire. Julian
I just realized that J Harlen Brentz taught science at Queen Ann High School in Seattle at the same time my grandmother went there. I wonder if she had him.
The Oregon Dept. of Corrections project at Wilsonville cir. 2000 uncovered what appeared to be deposited boulders. My thoughts then were that they may have been deposited by a flood event. A few great geology teachers, profs, were a great influence in my lifelong geology interests.
A comment on leveling the hills of Seattle if I'm remembering correctly that part of the reason. Was to raise the land so it did not flood at hightide and also so sewer and storm drains had height and slope to work . So disappointing to have the drains back up twice a day at hightide
