# The Centennial History of Oregon, 1811–1912/Volume 1/Chapter 6

CHAPTER VI
0000—1862
WHAT DID THE FORELOPERS FIND HERE—THE FACE OF NATURE—THE GEOLOGY AND EXTINCT ANIMAL LIFE—THE VAST WATER POWERS—MADE VALUABLE BY APPLICATION OF DISCOVERIES IN ELECTRICITY.
When the missionaries and first settlers came over the Rocky mountains down into the Snake river valley, they found a region wholly unlike anything they had ever beheld before. The Three Tetons. the vast lava sage brush plain, the great river coming from some mysterious distance nobody knew just where, the towering snow-capped mountains, the mighty water falls and the deep and trackless forests. It was a panoramic picture never to be forgotten; majestic and awe-inspiring rather than beautiful. The great mountain ranges, wide extended plains and gloomy forests seemed rather to forbid than invite examination. It was all natural enough and to be expected from the silent-going Indian, and necessary to the venturesome trapper; but for preachers and farmers, nature's wilderness required time to conquer. And for these reasons it was a whole generation of men from the time Jason Lee drove down his tent pegs in the Willamette valley until farmers and herdsmen ventured to build permanent homes on the wide extended areas of Central Oregon.
The Willamette valley was the first place settled in old Oregon. And it was by all visitors acclaimed the beauty spot of Oregon—another Garden of Eden. The only picture of the country extant made by one who knew its every nook and corner before the settlers came, and who had chased the elk and deer with his pony and rifle from Oregon City to Umpqua valley, and left a life-like description of the valley, was David McLoughlin, son of Dr. John McLoughlin. It was, he said, a natural park on a grand scale that could not have been improved by artificial culture. It was in its natural state of beauty, romantic and grand beyond the power of words to express, with prairies, streams and groves of trees filled with animal life. Herds of elk and deer could be seen everywhere feeding fearless of men. And from this valley the snow-capped peaks of both the Coast and Cascade ranges of mountains could be seen towering above the plains. This was the open book, the enchanting scene to every eye. But what was the underlying foundation?"
Everything in nature, says Emerson, is engaged in writing its own history; the planet and the pebbles are attended by their shadows, the rolling rock leaves its furrows on the mountain side, the river its channel in the soil, the animal its bones in the stratum, the fern and the leaf their epitaphs in the coal, and the falling rain drops sculptures their story on the sand and on the stone. Nearly everything that is known about the geological formation of Oregon is due to the unselfish labors of one man. The boy that grew up to be that one man was born ​in the south of Ireland ninety years ago, came to America with his parents when a boy, hunted rabbits in Central Park, New York, when it was waste wild land, worked hard with his own hands to pay for his own education, studied Theology and came around Cape Horn in a clipper ship with his young wife to labor in Oregon as a missionary, finally settled at the Dalles to preach the gospel where it was much needed, became interested in fossils and fossil rocks that the army officers brought in from the frontier posts in Harney valley, and in this way took up the study of Oregon geology, and in his book, "The Two Islands," edited and revised by his daughter, Ellen Condon McCornack, and published as "Oregon Geology," has told us how the Creator of the world built up that part of it called Oregon. It is a wonderfully interesting work, and no boy or girl in any high school or college in Oregon, or who hungers for an education, ought to think they know anything if they have not read and mastered Condon's Geology. This life work of Thomas Condon is monumental. Like Oregon's history and pioneer state builders, there is nothing like it, or equal to it to be found elsewhere; and the name of Thomas Condon will live to enlighten the world and honor the state when all its millionaires are wholly forgotten. (The biography of Prof. Condon may be found in the biographical volumes of this work.)
The geological history contained herein is largely the work of Mrs. McCornack, for which, as for many other suggestions, in connection with this work, hearty acknowledgment is made here. The engraved geological map printed herein is all the work of Mrs. McCornack. That young readers may more readily comprehend how the crust of the earth has been built up in all the millions of years that have passed since it became material substance condensed from gaseous vapor, a diagram of the different and succeeding layers of rock is also given which was taken from Dana's Geology.
THE PRE-CRETACEOUS AGE
If the reader will turn to the geological map he will find the oldest parts of Oregon represented by two areas indicated in the legend as Pre-Cretaceous. The one in southwestern Oregon and extending into California is Professor Condon's Siskiyou island. The other in the northeastern section of the state, following the outline of the Blue mountains, represents his Shoshone region.
These oldest parts of the state each contain within itself several different geological ages.
Lindgren tells us: "The oldest rocks of the Blue mountains are represented by the relatively small area of gneiss northwest of Sumpter and just north of Bald mountain. This rare spot of ancient Oregon history takes us back to a most ancient period in the earth's history, to the very dawn of plant and animal life and perhaps even before the vital spark of life had been kindled upon the earth.
All through the paleozoic or most ancient life period, the ocean covered the Blue mountain region, but a portion of this deep sea bed with its fine mud of clay and quartz material reached the sunlight above the surface of the ocean at the close of the carboniferous or coal period, for the argillite series of rocks into which it was changed is found from the head of the John Day valley southeast nearly to Huntington on the Snake river. These rocks contain but few fossils.
THOMAS CONDON
ages of the earth. But Liudgi-en tells us that the great amount of surface lava and other voleauic material mingled with the lime stones and shales of its sea bed indicate that in the region of the Blue mountains the Triassic ocean was comparatively shallow with land masses not far distant.
During this Triassic age the seas were full of great lizard-like reptiles or saurians, and as they were world-wide in their distribution they must have lived in Oregon waters. In fact, Dr. Merriam, of Berkeley, reports several species from the Triassic limestones of the eastern part of the Siskiyou region, now part of northern California, and from the location of the fossils, Dr. Merriam has called these marine reptiles shastasaurus.
At the close of tlie Triassic period, or later, there came a time of great up- heaval in the Blue mountain region. The low lying land and adjacent sea bed became what was probably Oi-egon's first high mountain.
The clay and quartz sediment which had been part of the deep Palfeozoic sea bed, became the mountains round about Baker, of which the Elkhorns are the most typical and the most conspicuous ; while a portion of the shallower Tri- assic sea bed with its lime, its shales and its abundance of volcanic rocks, became the Eagle Creek or Powder River mountains.
The elevation of these older portions of the Blue mountains was not a steady, gentle long-continued process that only required time for its completion, but was accompanied bj- great violence.
The Paleozoic rocks of silicious clay and the coarser limestones, shales and tuffs of the Triassic sea wei"e both subject to the same violence. Both were thrust upward into lofty mountains. The once horizontal sedimentary rocks were folded, compressed, crumpled and fused until the rocks themselves were greatly altered. Later deep fissures were opened, through which poured heated vapors laden with their precious burden'of gold, silver and copper, and these old moun- tains became a rich treasure house of Oregon's wealth.
There are mountains in the Siskiyou region made of the same fine granited argillite rocks that tell of the same deep paleozoic sea ; the marbles and limestone of the Eagle Creek or Powder River mountains are repeated in the more south- ern land, while the Blue mountain mines of gold, silver and copper ai-e rivaled by those of the Siskiyou region. In fact, in his Two Islands, Prof. Condon has greatly emphasized the intimate relationship of these two regions of Shoshone and Siskiyou.
Still another period, the Jurassic, is hidden within the area on map marked Pre-Cretaceous, for Jurassic sea shells are found at Burns and Silvies and other localities showing that much of the lower part of the Blue mountain region was still beneath the ocean, 'but after referring to the great erosion that had taken place in the older portions of the range, Lindgren writes: "The Blue mountains in Jurassic and early Cretaceous times must have been a range of imposing height."
The Olalla creek beds of the Siskiyou region give us a glimpse into the beauty of Oregon's Jurassic forests.
Near Olalla creek in Douglas county there was an old lake into whose depths drifted the leaves and fruits of the Jurassic forests. It was then too early in plant evolution to look for oaks or maples and other hardwood trees, and there were as yet no true palms ; but there were conifers, ferns and many a ​nd beauti-
ful eyeads, which combine some of the characteristics of both conifers and ferns with perhaps a still greater likeness to the palms.
If you go to a greenhouse and ask for a cycad palm, they will show you not a true palm, but a diminutive specimen of the beautiful cycad tree of Jurassic days. Its terminal bud unrolls like a fern, the wood and fruit are of the conifer type, but the foliage and general aspect of the tree foreshadowed the palm. Then, too, there grew near the Olalla lake the graceful gingko or maiden hair tree, now a native of Japan and China where its coniferous-like seeds are sold for food.
This same Oregon flora flourished on the northern Sierra of California, where have been found three different genera of conifers, ten species of cycads and per- haps a dozen species of ferns. If this flora grew in northern Sierras and in the Siskiyou region of Oregon, it is but reasonable to suppose that at least the lower slopes of the then majestic Elkhorn and Wallowa mountains, formerly known as Eagle Creek or Powder River mountains, were clothed with the same verdure.
The Jurassic fossils of the Blue mountain region thus far discovered are con- fined to the marine shells living along its sea shore. But there must have been many turtles and great sea lizards or saurians.
There seems to be no reason why the students of Baker or Union or Canyon or some other Blue mountain town may not discover cj'cads, Japanese gingkos and ferns in the sediment of an old Jurassic lake among the Blue mountains or un- earth the fossil bones of a great saurian-like reptile that ruled the seas in Jurassic daj's.
THE CRETACEOUS AGE
The next, or Cretaceous age, is indicated on our map by narrow winding bands of seabeach. A portion of this beach line has been indicated by Professor Condon and Dr. Dlller as entirely surrounding the Siskiyou region, passing up through northern California over the present site of Mount Shasta, north past Jackson- ville into Douglas county and finding the main ocean again near the mouth of the Coquille river. This same Cretaceous sea thrust its long arms in among the moun- tains of the Siskiyou island, leaving its record in fossil shells now found in the older valleys.
Still studying the map we find the Cretaceous rocks skirting the Blue moun- tains on the south and west. This border land has been so covered by later vol- canic floods of lava that it is difficult to determine the eastward extension of the Cretaceous sea, but its shells are found at Mitchell, on Rock creek and in the Crooked river country, and these are considered the last relics of the ocean in Eastern Oregon.
It seems well estalalished among geologists that the great mass of the Cascade mountains within the state of Oregon is built up by volcanic lava. But if it were possible to remove these thousands of feet of later eruptic rock and to ex- amine the fossils in the old sea floor beneath it all, geologists would expect to find shells common in Cretaceous seas.
The Cascade range may have been represented within our state by older islands, but at the close of the Cretaceous a low, broad dome of land was suf- ficiently elevated to exclude the ocean from eastern Oregon, and the bands on
THE CENTENNIAL HISTORY OF OREGON ISa
fact that tliis baseiaent roek of our Oregon Cascade range was once Cretaceous sea bed. This age is, so far as yet discovered, only represented in Oregon by shells and corals, but the possibilities of its fossils are by no means exhausted.
This period gave the world its fii'St palm trees and its first hardwood trees, as the oak, maple, hickory and walnut. It was during the Cretaceous that rep- tiles reached their greatest development. And it is supi)Osed to be the age in which the small inferior type of earlier mammals evolved into the multitutle of higher forms with which the next period opens.
Its climatic conditions were such that a very even temperature prevailed over the earth, so that zones of plant and animal life seem almost unknown. Dana says: "During the Cretaceous a warm climate still prevailed over the earth even to the poles." So that cycads flourished in Greenland, Spitzbergen, Alaska, British America, Montana, Siberia, Sweden, China and India; and the sequoia, the family of the California big trees and redwoods, was represented by many species throughout the north polar regions.
It is not at all impossible that some young geologist may find remains of Cre- taceous forests in Oregon, or while w'andering through some water-worn ravine, may come across an old Cretaceous tone bed, proving that Oregon, too, had her great, clumsy small-brained dinosaurs ; or he may find the bones of the long, bat- like finger of the pterodactyl, the lai-ge flying reptile that flitted from crag to peak. And why should the Rocky mountain region monopolize the Ci-etaeeous birds with their rows of sharp, recurved, reptile-like teeth? For these Cretaceous fossils we would look among the mountains or along the foothills of the regions of Shoshone and Siskiyou.
THE EOCENE AGE
In this age the ocean was excluded from eastern Oregon and Washington. The Eocene age dawned upon a region of lakes. Whether there were many or few of great extent, has not yet been determined and perhaps we may never know, for such large areas have since been covered by sheets of lava and later sediments that the older records have, in some regions been hopelessly buried and in others entirely destroyed. Eastern Oregon and Washington and southern Idaho must have been very beautiful in the early Eocene, for the Blue mountains were far grander then than now, they were much nearer the rugged vigor of their "topo- graphical youth" before erosion had worn down their lofty summits, and before lava floods had filled their valleys and transformed their foothills into a high ta- ble land of volcanic rock. Lindgren has said in his Gold Belt of the BJue Moun- tains :
"Take away the lava flows which cover the flanks of the Blue mountains and you would see rising to imposing heights almo.st from sea level, and separated by a lower gap, two great, roughly circular mountain groups — the Eagle Creek mountains and the Blue mountains proper." Prom these imposing mountains large lakes stretched out in every direction. The climate was damp and warm, well fitted to stimulate the growth of vegetation. The grand old coniferous trees were well represented and the hardwood trees as the oak, ash, elm and maple were increasing in numbi'rs and variety. Palm trees were never again so scattered over the whole earth as in the Eocene age, and the Northwest had its s ​hare. The
Cascade hills and Blue mountain valleys must have been very beautiful with their grand forests and many flowering shrubs; for Knowlton tells us the magnolia and cinnamon and fig trees were there, and before the close of the Eocene he adds the sycamore and sweet gum tree, the walnut, the dogwood and seven species of oak. There were sequoias to which genus the California redwood belongs, and our state flower, the Oregon grape, was then here, almost the same in species as the tall shrub, with which, we are so familiar, there were also climbing ferns and sweet mountain ferns, all flourishing in the Blue mountains or Shoshone region on the borders of a large lake that filled the John Day Valley.
During at least part of this time Payette lake covered the greater part of southern Idaho and the adjacent region of southeastern Oregon.
In the distant background of Payette lake was the majestic Wasatch range and the Owyhee mountains formed a conspicuous island in its vast expanse of waters, while on the shores grew the same rich forests that clothed the Blue mountain country.
."Western Oregon was represented during the Eocene age by a few low-lying islands in the line of the present Coast mountains, but sea shells of the period are scattered from the northern border of Siskiyou region through the valley of the Umpqua, the Willamette valley and on northward through the Puget sound country, proving that most of western Oregon was still a waste of ocean.
THE EOCENE COAL AGE
The coal-producing period in the United States east of the Mississippi river was the Carboniferous. The Rocky Mountain region looks to the Cretaceous for its supply of coal, while we of the Pacific coast are thankful for the later coal of the Eocene.
The most important field so far discovered was formed on the northern shore of our old Siskiyou region. Prof. Diller, who has made a careful study of this field, reports the land as gradually sinking during the Eocene period although with long intervals of rest. At times the field would be covered by fresh water or brackish swamps on which flourished a rank growth of vegetation destined to become a seam of glistening coal.
Then for a time the sea wOuld gain upon the land, leaving a deposit of sand and mud which later formed a layer of sandstone and shale containing Eocene shells.
Then another interval of rest and filling in of sediment would produce the broad expanse of rich swamp vegetation, which in time contributed its seam of coal. This same process repeated again and again through a long period of time gave us our Coos Bay coal. Later the old level lines of deposit became tilted and broken into endless confusion of outline.
The Tillamook and Nehalem coal was formed on an Eocene island, which like the other coal fields, experienced many quiet changes of level, sometimes covered by the life of the sea, then by the verdure of coal-producing swamps.
Prof. Diller suggests that Oregon has probably many undiscovered coal de- posits hidden away in our coast mountains and on the western side of the Cas- cades, covered now perhaps by a dense growth of forest trees.
state including the Coos Bay country and the valley of the Unipqua ; also an island extending northwest from Monroe to Albany, and the Nehalem and Tilla- mook coal fields.
THE MIOCENE AGE
The Oregon Eocene age drifted into Miocene time without striking topograph- ical changes. The broad, low basement of the Cascade mountains must have been growing for in addition to other evidence it is said that a large part of the deposits in which our Eocene age leaves were buried is fine volcanic ash, probably drifted from the volcanoes among the Cascade hills. If these fine particles fell in distant lakes of Oregon, Washington and Idaho, the "Cascade Barrier" must have already commenced that long period of vulcanism that slowly piled up ashes, cinders, bombs and lava into the grand mountain range of the future.
The land in the line of the Coast mountains was also becoming more elevated and of greater extent. A strip of Eocene sea bed was elevated into an island extending from near Monroe northward and including the hills west of Corvallis and Albany, where many characteristic Eocene shells are found.
The valley of the Umpqua was elevated above the sea level and the Calapooya mountains were probably connected with the present coast line by land of suf- ficient height to exclude the ocean from southwestei'n Oregon ; for Eocene shells are the latest positively identified in that region, except those found along the present ocean beaches. But the Miocene ocean still filled the Willamette valley with marine life, there were not only a great variety of shell fish, but seals must have been at home in these sheltered waters. The primitive seal of this period was quite different from modern forms and was perhaps an ancestral type from which the common seal, the sea lion, the walrus, and fur seal have since diverged. But life for these seals was not all sheltered peace, for there w^ere sharks in these same waters, some of their teeth have been taken from the old Miocene sea bed, now quarried for building stone, both in Polk county and at Eugene.
Eastern Oregon, Washington and Idaho was still a country of beautiful lakes with a warm, moist climate and luxuriant vegetation. One of the mysteries of our western geology is the sudden appearance in eastern Oregon of a most inter- esting and extensive fauna. By consulting a map of the Northwest it will be seen that the northern extension of the Wasatch mountains is the only barrier between Idaho and Wyoming. Now all through the Eocene there lived in Wyoming great numbers of strangely interesting Mammalian animals, while just west of these mountains in Idaho and the adjacent states of Oregon and Washington no Eo- cene mammals have been found. But the iliocene age dawns upon the descend- ants of these animals making themselves perfectly at home on the hills and marshy meadows that surrounded the large Pliocene lake that filled the John Day Valley. Many books might be written of these old "Oregon pioneers."
There was a primitive camel, the Poebrotheriura ; and they tell us the camel was originally a purely North American bred animal. One of the most formid- , able animals to be seen in those old Miocene woods was the Elotherium or Entelo- Idon. Of it Dr. Merriam, of Berkeley, writes.- "Probably few animals ever ex- listed better able to protect themselves than those huge Miocene boars." While ​
Dr Leidy said of one of them: "It actually bears more resemblance to the great felines, lions and tigers, than to its natural ally, the hog. ' '
There were also over a dozen species of the dog family, including the ances- tors of the wolves and foxes and that ancient line of dogs that was slowly evolv- ing into the modern bear.
There were many animals of the cat tribe with long, serrated sword-like teeth more destructive of life than the modern lion or tiger. With the great wolves the savage elotheres and the fierce flesh-tearing "saber-toothed tigers," 'tis no wonder the slow, shambling little horsesi learned to strain up on their tiptoes and run for their lives.
There was, too, a small deer no larger than a rabbit, the leptomeryx. It was allied to the musk-deer and was without antlers. This evolution of antlers in the deer is typical of the increasing struggle of life. In order to protect themselves some animals grew horns and antlers, some highly specialized teeth and claws, and some learned to increase their speed and run from their enemies.
A few of these early Miocene animals, as the rhinoceros, were much like the modem types, while the diminutive horses could barely be recognized as the pro- genitors of our modern steeds. Others, as the very common Oreodon, which must have roamed over the hills in herds, was a strange "blending of forms now so remote as the hog and the deer. ' ' The lake sediments, in which these animals of the early Miocene were buried, are called the John Day Beds. This chapter of early Miocene history was followed by one of the greatest periods of vulcanism the world has ever known.
There are two distinct types of vulcanism, the one manifested by an active volcano where clouds of smoke and steam are forced from a volcanic vent, with showers of ashes, cinders, bombs, electrical displays and great streams of molten lava pour out of the crater down the sides of the volcano. Of this tjqDC are Mount Pele and Mount Vesuvius. But the other type of vulcanism is much quieter and less spectacular. A great crack opens in the surface of the earth and from its depths wide streams of lava pour out over the land ' ' as water pours from a crack in the ice." Both types of vulcanism must have existed in Oregon during this middle Miocene age ; but geologists attribute the greater part of this wonderful outpouring of molten stone to cracks or "fissure eruptions." The valleys were filled, the hills and sometimes even the mountains were buried out of sight, and only a high plateau remained to indicate where mountain, hill and valley had been. This great outpouring of basalt covered much of eastern Oregon and Washington. A fine example of its magnitude is found in southeastern Washing- ton on Snake river at Buffalo rock, where an old mountain of schist stood at least 2,000 feet high when the lava began to flow. Of its history Russell says: "The river has cut its gorge across a buried mountain so as to expose the rocks com- posing it for about a mile on each side of the stream. The horizontal layers of basalt abut against the steep sides of the older mountain and show no evidence of disturbance at the contact. It is evident that the lower rocks have not been forced up into the basalt but that the latter was poured out in successive sheets and flowed around about a mountain of schist, and finally overtopped its summit and buried it from sight. Additional overflows of the same character were spread over the site of the buried mountain and reached a thickness of fully 1,000 to
Geological map of Oregon
The highest portions of our Ulue mountains, as the Eagle Creek or WaHowa mountains and the Elkhorn mountains, stand out as islands of limestone or marble and slate completely surrounded and partially submerged by those great lava flows. As Lindgren says of them: "The lower water courses became filled with basalt, damning its headwaters and creating lakes. The sharp slopes became sloping plateaus, and finally the Blue mountains stood like islands in a basaltic sea." The great lava flows through which the Des Chutes has worn its way, have been vividly described by Professor Condon in The Two Islands. While Rus- sell, of the United States Geological Survey, gives us a most interesting picture of Stein mountain with its thousands of feet of old basaltic lava. Here it can be studied in vertical sections, by reason of a fault which has left the highest part of this mountain block tilted up 5,000 feet above the Alvord valley at its steep eastern face.
Some of this lava flood in the northwest may have taken place as early as the Eocene age and some in much later times, but the greater part is believed to be the work of the Middle Miocene.
UPPER MIOCENE AGE
When this period of vnlcanism had passed and sufficient time had elapsed for the making of new soil by the crumbling and disintegration of volcanic rock; when shallow lakes had formed in the depressions above the lava flood, and herb- age and forests had again covered the vast expanse of dreary lava beds ; when at last mammals were again at home in eastern Oregon, we find that time had wrought mau.v changes. We miss the herds of oreodons for they had become al- most extinct. Even the fierce elotherium which was so well equipped for the struggle of life had disappeared. The rhinoceros, so common on the older Ore- gon lake shores, was seen no more. The three-toed horses were more numerous than before, but they wei-e quite different from the earlier horses, being now as large as an average Shetland pony and in every way more like the modern horse.
There were several new types in the camel family. And Dr. Merriam reports the first of Oregon mastodons as found in the Upper Miocene rocks. The stream of life had not diminished, but on the contrary, at no period in geological history of the northwest has it seemed so rich and full.
During the Upper Miocene the forests of Oregon and Wa.shington seemed to have reached the climax of their glory. In the John Day valley alone Knowlton, the Paleobotanist, reports eighty different forms, including the fig tree, magnolia, acacia, butternut, walnut, hiekorynut, birch, alder, bald cypress, Japanese cedar, three species of the sequoia family, to which the California big tree and redwood belong, seven species of oak, eight of maple, nine of willow, two of elm, three of sycamore, four of liquid-amber, the persimmon, horse chestnut, laurel and the maiden hair tree, or Japanese gingko.
Dr. Diller, in speaking of northern California during the Upper Miocene epoch, says: "No doubt the Sierra Nevada existed at that time, but its height was very low, at least in the northern part as compared with its present altitude. " The same might be said of the Cascade mountains of Oregon, so that the warm moisture-laden winds swept unhindered over this whole fertile region of the ​
northwest, giving it a fine climate and a semi-tropical flora that for richness and variety has never since been ecjualed on the coast.
We have seen that all through the Eocene and Miocene periods the Willamette valley was covered by the ocean, with only off-shore islands to mark the western boundary of the future Oregon. At the close of the Miocene age these detached sections became the United Coast range, and the ocean was shut out not only, but the valley was elevated above sea level, so that all fossils and sea shells com- mon in the quarries of the valley represent either Eocene or Miocene life. If the ■ student is in search of Eocene shells, they can be found near Monroe, Albany and Corvallis, in the range of hills elevated into an island at the close of the Eocene. If he wishes to collect Miocene fossils they can be found throughout the valley, not only a few feet below the surface of the level prairies, but most of the lower hills and isolated buttes were once old Miocene sea beds. Also in the South Yamhill valley above Sheridan and in the hills back of Clatskanie in Co- lumbia county. Chehalem mountains, the Eola or Polk county hills, the Waldo hills, the Linn county buttes and most of the buttes of Lane county, were ele- vated about this time. In some of these elevations the eruptive force was only strong enough to leave a dome-shaped hill, over which the sandstone of the Miocene sea-bed remains unbroken ; but with others the strain was great enough to tear open the top of the dome, and the lava which poured out covered the sum- mit and flowed down the sides, perhaps leaving hexagonal blocks of basalt to speak of those days of violence.
The Pliocene age was a time of elevation all o\er the Western United States and as the land was elevated the sea beach naturally moved farther westward until Oregon became much wider east and west than it is today ; and the Pliocene sea beach with its fossil fish, shells, sharks and seals, must now lie buried in an off-shore line, perhaps far out at sea.
The lakes of Eastern Oregon and Washington had been filled up and drained off until onlj' a remnant remained of their once great expanse of waters. But there seems to have been an extensive lake at this time in southeastern Oregon, the dimensions of which have not been accurately determined, but it may have covered the same area as the later Pleistocene lakj, indicated on our geological map as covering the Silver lake region. The name Fossil Lake has been applied to a part of this basin, but we will here use the lame as including the whole of the Pliocene lake. This fossil field was discoveied many years ago by the late Governor AVhiteaker and through his kindness explored by Professor Condon and later by Professor Cope, the Paleontologist. Here Professor Condon made a collection of beautifully preserved bird bones which he sent east to be identified, but which seemed too valuable to be returned and were finally lost to the rightful owner. Here at Fossil lake lived five species of gulls, two of terns, eleven species of ducks, four of geese and one of which ' ' must have been nearly as large again as our common wild Canada goose." There was also a large species of swan named for Governor Whiteaker — Vitikeri. There were great horned owls, black birds, coots, herons, crows, eagles, grouse, prairie hens and a great cormorant. "But the strangest figure upon the scene among the birds was a true Flamingo."
Perhaps some Klamath high school student while spending his summer vaca- tion, working on a new railroad survey or an irrigating ditch, may come across
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TILDem"'
even this thin covering has been blown away, leaving the bones exposed to the summer sun or winter snow. They will be highly prized as a nucleus for a high school museum or gladly received at the State University, for the dishonest gi-eed of an Eastern scientist has left Oi'egon without any collection of bird bones, which are so rare among fossils that an eminent paleontologist has spoken of these from Fossil lake and the Cretficeous birds of Kansas, as being the only fine collections of fossil birds in the United States.
In this Fossil lake region many mammal bones have also been found, includ-- ing three species of the modern one-toed horse and a great sloth-like animal as large as the grizzly bear, called the mylodon. There were also bears, coyotes, rabbits, gophers, otters, beavers, a mammoth elephant and at least four kinds of camel, ranging in size from a modern camel to the smaller auehenia. Most of these animals have also been found in a narrow lake in the Upper John Day val- ley, although bird bones are there extremely rare.
During the Pliocene age, especially near its close there was great activity in mountain building on our coast, not in the elevation of new ranges, for the Cas- cades and Sierra and the Coast mountains were all in place, but upon the broad dome-shaped basement story of the Cascades a grand super-structure was now built up, for it is to the Pliocene we owe much of the grandeur of the Cascades and High Sierra mountains. For their lofty summits, their towering peaks and castles, their volcanoes and grand snow peaks we are largely indebted to the Plio- cene and the following Pleistocene period.
We have noted the great outpouring of lava from cracks or fissure eruptions and that the fine ashy sediments in which the Eocene' and Miocene leaves were buried is proof that volcanoes then existed, probably in the Cascade and Cali- pooya mountains; but the Oregon portion of the Cascade range was then not of sufficient elevation to obstruct the ocean breeze in its progress toward eastern Oregon. The moisture-laden clouds had kept the lake shores and hillsides green with rich and luxuriant forest even to the close of the Miocene. But during the Pliocene all this was changing, the Cascade mountains were becoming a lofty mountain range, the climate was cooler, eastern Oregon and Washington were being ti-ansformed into a high table land and a fine grazing country, over which roamed herds of wild horses and camels. But the luxuriant forests were slowly retreating toward the south. For the whole North Temperate Zone was being elevated and the cold of the glacial period was gradually creeping over the land.
THE PLEISTOCENE AGE
When finally the Pliocene had passed and the Pleistocene with its glacial pe- riod had covered most of our northern states with a sheet of ice and snow, "Ore- gon was not under a continuous mantle of ice but had many independent glaciers of its own." Remnants of these still remain in place and the previous existence of others is proven by ice scratches, terminal moraines and other evidence of gla- cial action found in many of our mountain valleys. The glaciers of Rainier. Adams, Hood, Jefferson, Three Sisters and Mount Mazama were much greater than now. Lindgren tells us the Eagle Creek mountains and the Elkhorn and Greenhorn mountains all had their glaciers. Russell writes of glaciers in the Stein mountains. A glacier was plowing its way over the hills .just back o ​f The Dalles.
There were glaciers in tlie McKenzie valley and Mohawk valley. The Willam- ette valley was high table land with glaciers reaching to its borders. Puget sound was dry, with glaciers plowing across its valley near the present cities of Seattle and Tacoma. Dana tells us: "The river channels off the California coast indicate two or three thousand feet of added height to the coast, probably during the glacial period." The Straits of Fuca and the Columbia were then wearing deep channels "now twenty miles out at sea." Coos bay has its off-shore channel, giving added evidence of the coast during the Glacial age.
Dr. Diller tells us that during the Glacial period a grand snow peak towered above the present Crater lake. This mountain has been christened Mount Mazama, and once rivaled Shasta and Rainier in grandeur ; it was not only a snow peak, but was also an active volcano during the Glacial age. Some of the lava that rolled down the sides of the mountain and cooled into volcanic rock, were later scratched and scarred by the ice streams or glaciers that crept slowly toward the valleys. Finally Dr. Diller tells us that the whole summit of the mountain fell into the chasm beneath, a chasm left by the outpouring of molten material from within. This chasm is one of the wonders of our state ; for after engulfing the whole upper part of the mountain there still remains a crater six miles wide and four thousand feet deep. If man was living in Oregon as he was in Europe at this time the shock that accompanied the engulfing of this grand snow peak and volcano must have been to the poor superstitious savages a most frightful expe- rience.
How long, how continuous or severe was this Glacial age upon our coast is not accurately known, but it must have been of great duration. Most of the animals probably migrated southward, not alone on account of cold, but to an even greater extent because the forests and green herbage had moved toward the south, and the herb-eating animals must follow vegetation, and if the herfbiverous ani- mals migrated the flesh eaters must follow their prey. So there were very few animals that could have remained during the Glacial age.
When at last after the long period of cold had passed and the glaciers of Ore- gon had slowly retreated toward their glistening snow peaks, and the more tender herbage, shrubs and trees had crept northward, neither the animal nor vegetable life that returned to Oregon was the same. The great lapse of time, hundreds of thousands of years, and the increasing struggle for existence had worked through the laws of evolution to produce different animals and a different vegetation. The camel seems to have disappeared, and the herds of wild horses to nave re- turned no more. The mammoth elephant, judging from the frequency of its fossil remains, must have been a very common sight during this post-glacial time in Oregon and Washington.
The forests had lost much in richness and variety of forms. Many genera that flourished so hixuriantly in the upper Miocene or Mascal Flora have never returned to our Pacific Northwest.
We have seen that the Pliocene and Glacial were times of great elevation, but with the coming on of the post Glacial time, there was a gradual sink- ing of the northern part of the United States. Not only did the Pacific States lose much of their western border, recently acquired from the ocean, but the sea gained upon the land until the water stood several hundred feet
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ter on "The Willamette Sound" in I ho Two Islands, by Prof. Condon.
On our map j'ou will find his Willamette Sound represented by the Pleis- tocene dots. The islands of that grantl body of water as shown on the map are largely the Miocene hills, as Chehalem, the Eola Hills, the Waldo Hills, and the Buttes of Linn and Lane counties. Perhaps at times the lowest of these hills were covered by the waters of the Sound. Lindgren tells us Baker Val- ley, too, was a lake during this Pleistocene age. He believes the valley is the result of a fault at the eastern border of the Elkhorn mountains. If you turn to the map you will find the elevated beaches described in the Two Islands indicated by a Pleistocene border along the whole coast line of Oregon. As will be seen by the map the lakes in Oregon were very much larger then than now.
A portion of southeastern Oregon is of peculiar interest as belonging to the northern part of the "Great Basin" of Western America. The Oregon section of this great basin lies approximately between Stein Mountain on the east and Walker Range on the west, while the most northern portion of its boundary reaches Strawberry Range near Canyon.
The Great Basin is an area with no outer drainage and any excess of moisture which falls is soon evaporated into the dry atmosphere, so that its lakes rarely overflow and offer during tlie summer months become changed into dry alkali flats or playas.
Riissell tells us that the boundary line of the Oregon portion of the Great Basin is changeable. For .example the Klaipath basin used to be covered in the Pleistocene times by a long, narrow lake, "Probably including Klamath Marsh, Upper and Lower Klamath Lakes and Rhett Lake with much of their adjacent shores," and as this lake has an outlet the whole Klamath basin be- longed to the Great Basin structure which then extended to the Cascade mountains. But during some wet season this lake filled its basin and a trick- ling stream began wearing an outlet, first as a small brook then a larger stream, it finally grew into the Klamath river, with force enough to cut its way through the moimtains to the sea.
On the other hand we are told that during the Pleistocene the Malheur and Harney Basin was filled with a great lake which was drained by the Malheur river, but a later outflow of molten lava ran across the outlet form- ing a dam of volcanic rock through which it can not break and over which it can not flow. Thus, having no outlet, Harney and Malheur Lakes and Basins are now added to the Oregon section of the Great Basin.
Since so much has been written of faults in connection with the cause of the earthquake in California we may find fresh interest in studying the faults so common in this portion of Oregon.
Russell tells us this region has been cracked and broken by faults into long, narrow blocks running nearly north and south. Some of these "Oro- graphic Blocks" have been pushed up, others dropped down, but most of them have been tilted up on edge, the top of the block forming a gentle slope away from the uplifted side. A fine example of this "Block Mountain" type is found in Stein mountain in southei'n Harney county. Its precipitous eastern face stands five or six thousand feet above Alvord lake and valley at its base. This lake is deepest next the face of the precipice for the Alvord valley itself ​
is only the top of another faulted block which slopes gradnally upward toward the east.
If a small displacement along old fault lines could cause such a disastrous earthquake as recently visited California, what a terrible shaking Oregon must have experienced when five or six thousand feet of Eocene and Miocene strata sediment and columnar basalt were fractured, dislocated and heaved upward into a great lonely-looking mountain. But it seems most probable that this was accomplished by many successive faultings along the same line of fracture, rather than by one mighty upthrow. But Stein mountain is not the onlj' block mountain in this region. Russell tells us that most of the lakes of Lake County lie at the base of the precipitous face of a faulted mountain. Summer and Abert lakes, as well as the dried up Alkali lake, (now owned and worked for soda by the American Soda Products Co.) are good samples of these huge faults.
America has been designated as the Cradle of the Camels by Professor William B. Scott, of Princeton University.
"Camels have been found in almost every part of the world," he says, "but I believe they originated on this continent and passed into the Old World at one of the times when this and other continents were joined by the filling up of Bering Straits."
This theory of the filling up of Bering Straits has been used by the profes- sor also in explaining the similarity of structure in animals which would seem to have been at one time or other indigenous both to the far north and the far south. Bears at one time were supposed to have originated here, but scien- tists say now they lived first in the old countries and migrated here in one of the distant ages when the straits were closed and made a natural passageway into the country. The disappearance of the great prehistoric creatures which once roamed the earth the professor attributes to the introduction of new dis- eases rather than to an exhaustion or devolution of type.
Probably the most interesting part of the work of geologists and paleontolo- gists is the tracing out the similarity between the animals that lived on the earth millions of years ago and the animals on the earth now. The ancient horse looked more like a goat than the horse now in use. Some of them had three toes, and some four, with a long head and round ears. The ancient camel was a sort of a cross between the camel and giraffe that now exists. All these differences aiid peculiarities have to be studied out from the remains of the ani- mals found in the rocks. Many of the animals of ancient geologic times were far larger than anything on the globe now. There were Mastodons here in Oregon, fifteen feet in height, with tusks three times as long as the present day elephant. There were huge unwieldy lizard like beasts called Dinosaurs, thirty feet in length, and sabre toothed panthers or tigers, the most savage beast the earth ever produced. The numbers, variety and size of land animals, sea ser- pents, lizards and bird-life of ancient times far exceeded anything known to the age of man.
THE AGE OP MAN
In the order of their creation, or evolution, or how they got on the Earth,
DINOSAUR—LIZARD—30 FEET IN LENGTH MASTODON, 15 FEET HIGH OREGON RHINOCEROS
MAN. It has taken luillions of years, nobody eau guess within a iiiillioii years how long it has taken, to work out the grand scheme of creation as it now exists, before the eyes of living men. After all the animal life whose bony remains are locked uj) in solid rock or buried thousands of feet deep under deposits of earth and gravel had passed away, the area of Oregon was covered over with an ice cap thousands of feet deep. What change in the Earth, or the heavens, clianged ancient Oregon from the balmy climate producing figs and palm trees to that of a frigid region of continental ice can never be known. That the glacial age lasting for thousands, possibly a million years, did exist, is amply proved by the testimony of the rocks on all our mountain peaks. After the ice age then came Man.
Probably the most important discoveries ever announced in the field of American archaeology are contained in the newly pu})lished fifth volume of the reports of the Peabody museum. Harvard University.
In this volume Ernest Volk, of Trenton, New Jersey, published the evidence he has discovered showing the existence of man at the time of the glacial epoch in the Delaware valley, state of Delaware. This means that man existed in America at a prehistoric period which has been placed by geologists as far back as 400,000 years. It means that the early American was among the first men on earth, instead of being a comparatively late comer, as the majority of scientists have maintained.
During the last twenty-five years Mr. Volk has explored hundreds of excava- tions made by himself and others on the banks of the Delaware river, which in prehistoric ages was two or three times its present width. He points out that the characteristic soil formation of this region consists of (1) a layer of black soil on top of which lived the Indians who were here when white men first came; (2) below this the yellow drift deposited by argillite; tools six inches down in the yellow drift, and beneath another 18 inches of black soil.
"It contained," he says, "under a flat slab of argillite, a beautiful slender argillite spear head; also several chipped argillite boulders, argillite chips and a number of quartzite pebbles broken by fracturing. No charcoal, burnt stone or traces of fire were found. The yellow soil was not disturbed below the work- shop, nor was there any connection between the workshop and the black soil.'"
Then came the finding of human bones in the yellow dirt drift on Abbot's farm.
"On April 21, 1899," says Volk's report, "two distinct heaps of human bones were found. They were six feet below the present surface, and rested upon a stratum of whitish sand, coarse, clean and sharp, six inches thick."
The implements he found in the yellow drift were all of argillite. a kind of slate, and of two kinds only, one for penetrating, the other for cutting and scrap- ing. They are entirely different from the Indian stone implements, which are iiiMdc of chert, jasper and many other materials, and show a high degree of workmanship.
ECONOMIC GEOLOGY
Nature's great work in the geological up-building of this region has given to Oregon its different climates and soils, its mines of gold, silver, ​copper, iron.
coal, soda, cement and building materials, its grand forests, its navigable rivers, and last but not least, its incalculable water power — greater than that of all the states east of the Missouri river. The Oregon mountain peaks, with their connected ranges, now conserved by government control, lofty, grand and forbidding, will furnish wealth and comfort beyond estimate or comprehension. They take from the clouds and storms of winter and store up in the in- calculable millions of tons of snow and ice, the water, which being released, by summer heat, will not only irrigate and fructify the vast arid plateaus of central Oregon, producing as long as the race of man shall exist, the bread, fruit, and meat on which he must live, but also furnish the electric energy to plow the land, harvest the crops, transport the goods and produce, turn the wheels of thousands of manufacturing establishments, and lastly but not least, heat and light the homes of millions of Oregon's future population. For a hun- dred years these grand Oregon mountains have been condemned by traveler, historian and economist as frowning forbidding mountain wilds of use only to sportsmen and mountain climbers. But the Creator of the Earth builds wiser than men ; and the truth is just dawning upon the minds of men, that in the conservation of their forests of timber, their incalculable capacity to pro- duce electric energy and a health giving climate the Oregon mountain peaks and ranges is Oregon's greatest asset of wealth and health.