Livingston and Hornitos, California

First timer?  In this formerly once-a-day blog (and now pretty much a once-a-week blog), I use an app that provides a random latitude and longitude that puts me somewhere in the continental United States (the lower 48).  I call this “landing.”

I keep track of the watersheds I land in, as well as the town or towns I land near.  I do some internet research to hopefully find something of interest about my landing location. 

To find out more about A Landing A Day (like who “Dan” is) please see “About Landing” above.  To check out some relatively recent changes in how I do things, check out “About Landing (Revisited).”

Landing number 2419; A Landing A Day blog post number 852.

Dan:  Today’s lat/long (37.4825 ^o N, 120.5040^oW) puts me in central California:

Without a decent mapping program, I’m going to use Google Earth (GE) for my local landing map:

Looky there!  Two landings very close – just one mile apart!  The one to the left is landing 2248 (February 2016, “Snelling and Merced, California”). 

And now, time for true confessions.  My regional landing map above is cut and pasted from landing 2248.

I found a “hydrographic” add-on for Google Earth.  Using it, I was able to find this:

So, I landed in the watershed of Cowell Ditch.  Stealing information from landing 2248, Cowell Ditch joins up with Dana Slough.  And then, using Google Maps:

You can see that Dana Slough discharges to the Merced River (2^nd hit; my first hit, obviously, was landing 2248).

I’ll then borrow this regional watershed map from landing 2248:

The Merced discharges to the San Joaquin (12^th hit), which makes its way to San Francisco Bay (16^th hit).

There is excellent GE Street View coverage:

And with my landing only one hundred yards away, here’s what the Orange Dude sees:

And then, he turns around and looks downstream at Cowell Ditch:

I moved him a few hundred yards north to look at the Dana Slough:

And here’s what he sees:

And just a couple of miles away, here’s a quick look at the Merced River:

OK, so it’s time to check out Livingston.  From Wiki:

The Livingston post office opened in 1873, closed in 1882, and re-opened in 1883.  [I don’t know why details about the Post Office are so often considered important in the Wiki “History” section.  Oh well.]

The town was named for Dr. David Livingstone, a British explorer of Africa who was an international celebrity in the late 1800s. An error on the town’s Post Office application resulted in the difference in spelling between his name and the town’s

I presume you know about as much about Dr. Livingstone as I do.  So, just a little bit of info, from Wiki:

David Livingstone (1813 – 1873) was a Scottish physician, African explorer and pioneer Christian missionary.  He was one of the most popular British heroes of the late 19th-century Victorian era. He had a mythical status that operated on a number of interconnected levels: Protestant missionary martyr, working-class “rags-to-riches” inspirational story, scientific investigator and explorer, imperial reformer, anti-slavery crusader, and advocate of commercial and colonial expansion.

[In the plus column, he was anti-slavery.  In the minus column, he was an advocate of colonial expansion.]

His fame as an explorer was based on his obsession with learning the sources of the Nile River. “The Nile sources,” he told a friend, “are valuable only as a means of opening my mouth with power among men. It is this power which I hope to remedy an immense evil” – the slave trade.  His subsequent exploration of the central African watershed was the culmination of the classic period of European geographical discovery and colonial penetration of Africa.

Livingstone completely lost contact with the outside world for six years and was ill for most of the last four years of his life.

Henry Morton Stanley had been sent to find him by the New York Herald newspaper in 1869. He found Livingstone in the town of Ujiji on the shores of Lake Tanganyika on 10 November 1871, greeting him with the now famous words “Dr. Livingstone, I presume?”

Livingstone responded, “Yes” and then “I feel thankful that I am here to welcome you.” These famous words may have been a fabrication, as Stanley later tore out the pages of this encounter in his diary.  Even Livingstone’s account of this encounter does not mention these words.

[Makes one wonder what was really said.  Here’s ALAD’s version:  As Dr. Stanley approached Livingstone, he said, “My God, you look terrible.”  Dr. Livingstone responded, “Who the hell are you?  You don’t look so great yourself.”  Later, they decided they needed a sanitized version  . . . ]

However, the phrase appears in a New York Herald editorial dated 10 August 1872, and the Encyclopædia Britannica and the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography both quote it without questioning its veracity.

The words are famous because of their perceived humor, Livingstone being the only other white person for hundreds of miles.

Despite Stanley’s urgings, Livingstone was determined not to leave Africa until his mission was complete. His illness made him confused and he had judgment difficulties at the end of his life.

David Livingstone died in 1873 at the age of 60 in Chief Chitambo’s village at Ilala, southeast of Lake Bangweulu, in present-day Zambia, from malaria and internal bleeding due to dysentery. His loyal attendants Chuma and Susi removed his heart and buried it under a tree near the spot where he died.  The site is now known as the Livingstone Memorial.

The rest of his remains were carried, together with his journal, over 1,000 miles by Chuma and Susi to the coastal town of Bagamoyo, where they were returned by ship to Britain for burial at Westminster Abbey.

Moving right along.  Hornitos, I presume.

There’s an old historical plaque in town (or at least there was).  Here’s the transcription:

Started in 1850 by outcast Mexicans from nearby Quartsburg and given the name Hornitos, meaning “Little Ovens” from the dome-like rock and mud bake ovens being used by some Germans. 

The Whites soon gained predominance.  The population grew to many thousands and it became one of the richest and toughest early day mining camps.

Wow.  The Whites soon gained predominance, eh?  Talk about politically incorrect . . .

Here Joaquin Murietta, noted bandit chief, had a hideout and many friends. 

So happy he had many friends.

Wells Fargo established an office as early as 1852 to handle the millions produced by nearby mines.

Ghirardelli of chocolate fame started his fortune by merchandising.

More about Ghirardelli in a bit.

Here, for over fifty years, were enacted the annual religious customs of old Mexico.

Wiki has another story all together about the origin of the town’s name:

The name, meaning “little ovens” in Spanish, was derived from the community’s old Mexican tombstones that were built in the shape of little square bake ovens.

[Revisionist history, or the truth?  I certainly prefer Wiki’s version!  Continuing with Wiki]:

Domingo Ghirardelli had a general store here between 1856 and 1859 where he perfected his chocolate recipes. The remains of the store can still be seen in town.

 Here are some pictures, from Wanderwisdom.com, starting with Ghirardelli’s building:

 

Here’s some old building:

And the old town jail:

 

And the Masonic Lodge:

From walkingmyfamilyline.blogspot, here’s a back-in-the-day shot of the old hotel (looking quite prosperous):

 

From Wikimapia, here’s a bunch of guys in front of the Hornitos saloon:

 

And, from Calisphere – the California State Library website, this shot of Main Street:

A quick word about Ghirardelli Chocolate.  Domingo moved on from Hornitos and set up shop in San Francisco, where he really made it big.  I mentioned Ghirardelli to my wife Jody, who spent some formative years in San Francisco.  She immediately said “Ghirardelli Square.”  So, I went to Wiki:

Ghirardelli Square is a landmark public square with shops and restaurants and a 5-star hotel in the Fisherman’s Wharf area of San Francisco, California.

In 1893, Domenico Ghirardelli purchased the entire city block in order to make it into the headquarters of the Ghirardelli Chocolate Company. In the early 1960s, the Ghirardelli Chocolate Company was bought by the Golden Grain Macaroni Company which moved the headquarters off-site to San Leandro and put the square up for sale.

San Franciscan William Roth and his mother, Lurline Roth, bought the land in 1962 to prevent the square from being replaced with an apartment building. The square and its historic brick structures became an integrated restaurant and retail complex. The historic  Clock Tower was renovated; the lower floors of the Clock Tower are now home to Ghirardelli Square’s main chocolate shop.

As I’m finishing things up, I’ll repeat my Dana Slough GE Street View shot:

For post 2248, I closed with this Panoramio shot by Ray1623 of the cattle along Dana Slough (some of which you can see above):

For this post, I’ll close with a GE shot by Kevin Swaney from the same location, but now a bison (and a llama?) have been added to the mix:

 

That’ll do it . . .

KS

Greg

 

© 2018 A Landing A Day

 

 

 

 

 

Bruneau and Wickahoney, Idaho

First timer?  In this formerly once-a-day blog (and now pretty much a once-a-week blog), I use an app that provides a random latitude and longitude that puts me somewhere in the continental United States (the lower 48).  I call this “landing.”

I keep track of the watersheds I land in, as well as the town or towns I land near.  I do some internet research to hopefully find something of interest about my landing location. 

To find out more about A Landing A Day (like who “Dan” is) please see “About Landing” above.  To check out some relatively recent changes in how I do things, check out “About Landing (Revisited).”

Landing number 2418; A Landing A Day blog post number 852.

Dan:  Before diving in to my usual ALAD shtick, I need to remind you that my hard drive crashed.  I wasn’t able to recover my Street Atlas mapping program, so the maps for this post are from Google Maps.  I’m not satisfied with these maps, but they’ll have to do for this post . . .

Today’s lat/long (42.6582 ^o N, 116.0395^oW) puts me in SW Idaho (you have to look closely to see the state lines):

And here’s my local landing map:

Here’s a Google Earth (GE) shot that features my two titular towns:

Zooming way in with Google Maps:

I had no idea that Google Maps actually shows creek names!  So, I landed in the watershed of Big Jacks Creek. 

I couldn’t connect the two creeks on a single map, but trust me that Big Jacks Creek flows into Jacks Creek:

Zooming back (and adding my own labels) you can see that Jacks Creek flows into the Bruneau River (1^st hit ever!), which discharges to the Snake River (85^th hit).  The Snake makes its way to the Columbia (177^th hit).

Here’s an oblique GE shot, showing my cool landing location, right above Big Jacks Creek:

So, my titular Bruneau is hookless, but not far away is the Bruneau Sand Dunes.  Here’s a GE shot of the dunes:

Here are some cool pics.  First these, from Idaho State Parks:

And this, from Gene and Daniel’s Channel:

And this GE shot, from Kris:

 

And I found an article thusly titled:

Precision Topography of a Reversing Sand Dune at Bruneau Dunes, Idaho as an Analog for Transverse Aeolian Ridges on Mars

by James R. Zimbelman and Stephen P. Scheidt

Before talking about Mars, the authors present a little background about the Bruneau dunes (which are known as “reversing dunes”):

A reversing sand dune is defined to be ‘‘a dune that tends to develop unusual height but migrates only a limited distance because seasonal shifts in direction of the dominant wind cause it to move alternately in nearly opposite directions’’ (Jackson, 1997, p. 545).

The seasonal wind pattern is therefore bidirectional for reversing dunes, where the two dominant winds from nearly opposite directions are balanced with respect to strength and duration (McKee, 1979).

The Bruneau Dunes in central Idaho are an excellent place to conduct a study of reversing sand dunes because here the dunes have grown to impressive heights in a wind regime that supports the development of reversing dunes rather than horizontally migrating dunes.

In fact, the Bruneau dunes sport the tallest dune in North America – 470 feet high.

So anyway, there are many sand dunes on Mars, and given their morphology, it has been hypothesized that some of the dunes (the Transverse Aeolian Ridges, or TARs) are reversing sand dunes like Bruneau.  The study concluded that in fact, this is true.

Here are some cool shots of the Mars TAR dunes from Wiki:

My first ALAD Mars pics!

So, what about Wickahoney?  Well, here’s what Wiki has to say about Wicka:

Wickahoney is a ghost town in Owyhee County, Idaho. The town is located in a remote part of southern Owyhee County. It once had its own post office, which doubled as a stagecoach stop on the route from Mountain Home, Idaho to Mountain City, Nevada; the now-abandoned Wickahoney Post Office and Stage Station is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

And here’s what Idaho Public TV has to say:

The Wickahoney stage stop, or what’s left of it, wasn’t always a crumbling ruin in the middle of the Owyhee Desert. It was once the tidy home of the Dunning family, who established a ranch at the remote location in 1887.

It was also a functioning post office and refuge for travelers on the stage route between the towns of Mountain City, Nevada and Mountain Home, Idaho. As with most desert encampments it was built near a dependable water supply, the lush Wickahoney Springs.

Here’s a GE shot showing that there is some water near Wickahoney:

Here’s the way it used to look:

And here’s what it looks like today:

I’ll close with some local GE shots.  First this, of the Bruneau Canyon, by James Farrell:

A little further upstream, here’s how it looks (by Greg Stringham):

Here’s a shot by David Ross of Big Jacks Creek, just upstream from my landing:

And here’s some cool rocks a little further upstream (GE pic by Greg Stringham):

 

 

That’ll do it . . .

KS

Greg

 

© 2018 A Landing A Day

 

 

 

 

 

Peach Springs, Arizona

First timer?  In this formerly once-a-day blog (and now pretty much a once-a-week blog), I use an app that provides a random latitude and longitude that puts me somewhere in the continental United States (the lower 48).  I call this “landing.”

I keep track of the watersheds I land in, as well as the town or towns I land near.  I do some internet research to hopefully find something of interest about my landing location. 

To find out more about A Landing A Day (like who “Dan” is) please see “About Landing” above.  To check out some relatively recent changes in how I do things, check out “About Landing (Revisited).”

Dan:  As I mentioned in my last post – “Pearce Ferry, Arizona,” my hard drive crashed, and so I’m buying a little time for myself by stretching my landing to two posts.  Plus, I had three decent hooks (only one of which was covered in my previous post).  

So, this post has a different title, but it’s the same landing (so no ALADus Obscurus).  Here’s the same local landing map:

I’m also going to repeat one of the Google Earth (GE) shots from the Pearce Ferry post:

As I said in that post, there’s no Street View coverage along the nearby road.  But, I realized that E. Diamond Bar road leads to an airport.  An airport???  I thought I landed out in the middle of nowhere.

And past the airport, there appears to be something of potential interest:

I’ll say!  Check out this GE close-up:

The loop thing sticking out over the edge of the cliff is the famous Grand Canyon West Skywalk.  Here’s a shot from the website:

And another:

And yes, the floor of the skywalk is glass. 

From the website:

In the old days, the most thrilling view you could get of the Grand Canyon came standing at its edge. In 2007, that view got even better with the opening of the Skywalk at Eagle Point. This 10-foot-wide, horseshoe-shaped glass bridge extends 70 feet out over the rim of the Canyon. Look down and you can see right through the glass platform 4,000 feet to the floor of the Canyon below. Profiled by the National Geographic Channel, The Today Show, and CNN, this engineering marvel offers unparalleled views of the one of the world’s Seven Natural Wonders.

Nervous about walking on glass almost a mile above the Grand Canyon? Have no fear; the Skywalk is strong enough to bear the weight of seventy 747 passenger jets.

And then just past the Skywalk, you can drive on to Eagle Point [aka Guano Point; more about the name coming right up]:

And what’s this right out on the point (as you can see on this amazing GE shot)?

From Papillon.com:

Jutting out into the Grand Canyon, Guano Point could be one of the most stunning viewpoints in the whole of the Grand Canyon. One can walk out to the tip of the point and experience a nearly 360 degree canyon view.

While at the point one can see a few remnants of a past age. In 1958 the rights to a nearby bat cave were purchased by U.S. Guano Corp. The company constructed a $3.5 million dollar, 8,800-ft tramway system to extract the expected 100,000 tons of guano (a valuable ingredient in fertilizer) from the cave below the rim.

Unfortunately the original site survey was incorrect and the last of the mere 1,000 tons of guano was extracted by the end of 1959. Shortly after the mine petered out, a US Air Force fighter jet collided with the overhead cable system, permanently disabling it. [Yea, but what happened to the jet?!?]  The remaining towers were left intact as a monument to man’s attempt to mine the canyon.

So how about Peach Springs.  Well, there’s a story.  I had just landed at this location and was taking my first look at the Street Atlas landing map.  (This is before my hard drive crashed).  As shown on my local landing map, the nearest town was Peach Springs.

So, of course, I Googled Peach Springs, went to Wiki and read this about the Route 66:

Route 66 runs through the town and brought large numbers of cross-country travelers.  However, in 1978, Interstate 40 was opened 25 miles to the south. Overnight, Peach Springs went from being on the main drag to being more than thirty miles from the new interstate.   The new road shortened the highway distance from Kingman to Seligman by 14 miles at the expense of turning villages like Truxton, Valentine and Hackberry, Arizona, into overnight ghost towns. Peach Springs survived as the administrative base of the Hualapai tribe but suffered irreparable economic damage.

Personal aside – and this is truly amazing:  At the very moment that I was doing my Peach Springs research, my four granddaughters were in the next room watching the Disney Pixar movie “Cars” (which I had never seen).  I was invited to watch, but I decided that I’d rather work on my landing.

So, there’s was a Wiki section entitled “In Popular Culture.”  My jaw hit the table when I read this:

A similarly named and situated town, Radiator Springs, is depicted in the 2006 animated film “Cars”. A map with no local off-ramp from I-40 to a largely-parallel US 66 is described in the movie (“the town was bypassed to save ten minutes of driving”) to explain vacant, abandoned storefronts after the new road reduced Main Street traffic to zero.

Wow!  What are the odds?  A quick calculation shows that I have about a one in 2,000 chance of landing within 20 miles of a particular town in the Lower 48.  So what are the odds that the movie Cars would be playing in the next room at the same time I was landing?  One in a million?  And remember, we would have to multiply those two numbers, so we’d be at one chance in two billion! 

The Landing God was getting a good chuckle when He set this up for me! 

I immediately abandoned my landing, and sat down to watch the rest of the movie – I missed the first half hour or so, but I was filled in on the important details.  Actually, pretty cool movie.  Here are a couple of shots:

 

I’ll close with this shot from Eagle (Guano?) Point from the website GrandCanyonTours.com:

That’ll do it . . .

KS

Greg

 

© 2018 A Landing A Day

Pearce Ferry, Arizona

First timer?  In this formerly once-a-day blog (and now pretty much a once-a-week blog), I use an app that provides a random latitude and longitude that puts me somewhere in the continental United States (the lower 48).  I call this “landing.”

I keep track of the watersheds I land in, as well as the town or towns I land near.  I do some internet research to hopefully find something of interest about my landing location. 

To find out more about A Landing A Day (like who “Dan” is) please see “About Landing” above.  To check out some relatively recent changes in how I do things, check out “About Landing (Revisited).”

Landing number 2417; A Landing A Day blog post number 851.

Dan:  Today’s lat/long (35^o 55.291’N, 113^o 55.473’W) puts me in NW Arizona:

I landed out in the boonies:

You don’t see Pearce Ferry.  Well, I’ll show you what’s going on soon enough.  You also may be wondering why Peach Springs isn’t titular.  Well, stay tuned, and you’ll find out at the end of this post.

My streams-only map doesn’t give much in the way of local information, but I certainly landed in the Colorado River watershed (185^th hit):

As usual when I land in the arid West, I turn to Google Earth (GE) to better define my drainage.  Well, here ‘tis:

So there is a drainageway (likely a “wash”).  But does it have a name? Well, let’s see.  First, I zeroed in on where the wash hits the Colorado:

So, “Pearce Ferry Road” dead-ends at the river.  Think I Googled “Pearce Ferry?”  Well, duh . . .

So, Wiki lets us all know that the Pearce family operated a ferry at this location, starting around 1876. 

Being a wild and crazy guy, I decided to Google “USGS map Pearce Ferry.”  Bingo!  Here ‘tis:

And there it is!  I landed in the watershed of Grapevine Wash!

I was hopeful for good GE Street View:

But alas.  E Diamond Bar road does not have Street View coverage . . .

So, while on Google, I discovered that there is a Pearce Ferry Rapids.  Here’s the June 2017 GE look at the rapids:

And a close-up:

Looks like pretty nasty rapids, eh?  (Gnarly in young, cool kayaker’s terminology).  Well, when one Googles “Pearce Ferry Rapids,” there is much information.  In summary:

• Hoover Dam (which dams up Lake Mead) was completed in 1936, and Lake Mead reached maximum capacity sometime before 1940.
• The Lake had various highs and lows through the years, but the last time it was at full capacity was 1983.
• When the lake is relatively high, the area of Pearce Ferry is below water, and (of course) there are no Pearce Ferry Rapids.
• Beginning in about 2000, a regional, long-term drought began, and water levels began to drop. Here’s a graph (by Paul Lupus, posted in Arachnoid.com:

• Beginning about 2008, the lake was gone at Pearce Ferry, and rapids began to develop.
• By about 2014, the rapids became impassable.

Here’s a You Tube video “Camino de Santiago Journey” that shows the rapids.  Notice that early in the video, the narrator points out that the silt formation on the other side of the river was laid down when the lake was at much higher levels.

 

Here’s a video showing “dories” shooting the rapids in December 2008 (just after the lake dropped low enough so that the rapids formed):

 

Here’s a February 2017 video by Tom Martin showing the rapids in their full glory:

 

NEWS FLASH!  My hard drive crashed!  Fortunately, I was able to save my landing spreadsheet, the photos/figures for this post and the Word document where I prepare my drafts.  But, Street Atlas:  GONE!  All of my landing yellow push-pins on Google Earth:  GONE!  I had 440 Google Earth push-pins, marking all of my landing spots since January 2013.  As I recall, I had a hard drive crash back then, and the same thing happened . . .

I was working on two other hooks for this post, but because this is going to take me some time and effort to get ALAD back on track, I’m going to close this post for now.  Look for a “revisited” post next.  Teaser:  among other things, it’ll feature Peach Springs, the town you can see on my local landing map.

I’ll close with this GE shot by Liam Mulder, taken 10 miles east of my landing, in the area considered as the west end of the Grand Canyon:

 

That’ll do it . . .

KS

Greg

 

© 2018 A Landing A Day

 

 

 

 

 

La Grande, Oregon

First timer?  In this formerly once-a-day blog (and now pretty much a once-a-week blog), I use an app that provides a random latitude and longitude that puts me somewhere in the continental United States (the lower 48).  I call this “landing.”

I keep track of the watersheds I land in, as well as the town or towns I land near.  I do some internet research to hopefully find something of interest about my landing location. 

To find out more about A Landing A Day (like who “Dan” is) please see “About Landing” above.  To check out some relatively recent changes in how I do things, check out “About Landing (Revisited).”

Landing number 2416; A Landing A Day blog post number 849.

Dan:  Today’s lat/long (45^o 28.549’N, 118^o 0.066’W) puts me in NE Oregon:

My local landing map shows the titular La Grande (plus a few other teeny hookless towns):

My streams-only map shows that I landed in the Willow Creek watershed:

As you can see, Willow Creek discharges to the Grande Ronde River (4^th hit), on to the Snake (84^th hit) and (of course, but not shown), on to the Columbia (176^th hit).

As you can see, Google Earth (GE) Street View will do double duty, showing us Willow Creek as well as my landing:

Here’s the view upstream towards my landing:

And, because it’s so pretty, here’s the downstream view:

I don’t really have anything to say about La Grande – so you might wonder why it’s titular.  Well, Wiki mentioned that La Grande (pop 13,000) is the largest town in the Grande Ronde Valley, and the Grande Ronde Valley was Wiki-clickable. 

So click I did, and discovered that its name means “great circle,” which is one way to describe the valley.  Here’s a GE shot of the valley, and as you can see, the central part of the valley is somewhat circular:

 Here’s an oblique shot looking across the valley up near my landing:

But what caught my eye (and is the hook for this landing) is the fact that Wiki tells us that the Grande Ronde Valley is underlain by the Columbia River Flood Basalts.

I’ve mentioned this geologic feature several times in this blog, but always in the context of the great Glacial Lake Missoula Floods, which swept down across the basalts, creating a unique landscape known as the “channeled scablands.”  (Check out my Missoula MT, Lake Chelan WA and Othello WA posts for way more information on this, perhaps my favorite blogging topic.)

Even though I’ve landed in the flood basalts many, many times, I’ve never featured them.  I’ll start with a map:

All of the green on the above map is underlain by the Columbia River Flood Basalts.  So what exactly are they?  Here’s some general information: 

• Cracks (“feeder dikes”) opened up in the earth’s crust. Liquid magma poured out, “flooding” the landscape with molten lava.
• The lava covered an amazing 63,300 square miles.
• The lava (now basalt) is as much as 2 miles thick.
• About 85% of the lava erupted during a one-million year period, about 15 – 16 million years ago. The volume of this eruption is about 42,000 cubic miles, enough to cover the continental United States to a thickness of 40 feet!

Here’s a map showing the location of the feeder dikes (the dashed lines):

One of the flows traveled from west Idaho (from the feeder dike labeled CJ) all the way to the Pacific Ocean (375 miles), making it the longest known lava flow on Earth!

From Oregon State University, here’s a picture of an actual feeder dike (located about 40 miles east of my landing):

Here’s a USGS shot of basalt flow beds along the Columbia River:

Now we have to get to the “why” part of the story.  Although not totally accepted, it seems generally true that the basalt flows are associated with the Yellowstone Hotspot.  The hotspot is a huge blob of liquid magma (normally found in the mantle) that is much closer to the surface than typical.  It is currently located under Yellowstone Park, and is the cause of all of the hotsprings and geysers.

Now, pay attention.  Because of plate tectonics, it turns out that the continental U.S. is generally creeping west (away from the Mid-Atlantic Ridge), at a breakneck speed of about 2 inches per year.

Relatively speaking, the hotspot is stationery, so the hotspot appears to be migrating eastward at a rate of 2 inches per year (as the continental US creeps westward over the hotspot).  Here’s a map showing the apparent migration of the hotspot (the numbers in each hotspot location are millions of years):

So, 15-16 million years ago, when the basalts were pouring out onto the surface, the hotspot was near the far southeastern corner of Oregon, quite a distance away from the feeder dikes (like 250 miles).

Various geologists have hypothesized that due to tectonic forces, 1) the crust was thinned out up in the NE Oregon area, and 2) cracks formed in the crust.  The area of liquid magma is much larger than the hotspot, and it is theorized that liquid magma made its way to the surface from the general hotspot area via the feeder dikes.

Although I don’t pretend to understand everything on this Wiki map, it generally shows the connection between the hotspot and the area of the feeder dikes:

It’s time to look for some pretty photos near my landing. Here’s a GE shot by Zach Aichele, taken from the mountains west of my landing, looking east across the Grande Ronde Valley:

I’ll close with this shot taken in the same mountains, by Taylor Schuck:

That’ll do it . . .

KS

Greg

 

© 2018 A Landing A Day