Lenapah, Delaware, Nowata and Centralia, Oklahoma

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 2520; A Landing A Day blog post number 964

Dan:  Today’s lat/long (N36^o 56.015’, W95^o 29.337) puts me in northeastern Oklahoma, right up against the Kansas border:

My local landing map:

I’m going to jump over to Google Earth (GE) to take a look at my very local watersheds:

You can see that I landed in the watershed of Crow Hollow Creek; on to Snow Creek, to the Verdigris River (6^th hit). Switching over a streams-only StreetAtlas map:

The Verdigris discharges to the Arkansas (140^th hit); on, of course, to the Mississippi (976^th hit).

FYI, “Verdigris” means green-gray in French.  Evidently, early French trappers thought that it described the color of the water . . .

The Orange Dude managed to get a look at my landing location:

And here’s what he sees:

Wow. There’s nothing there! A little bored with the landscape, he moved a mile or so to the southwest to get a look at the Verdigris River:

And here ’tis:

I’ll start out with a quick look at the teeny towns of Lenapah and Delaware.  Lenapah is from “Lenape,” an eastern tribe of Indians.  Delaware is what the English called the Lenapes, along with a few other eastern tribes.  Here’s a map of where they lived:

As a New Jersey guy, if I were ever to find an arrowhead in my neighborhood, it would be from the Lenape.  The Lenape are the folks who sold Manhatten for some beads.  By the way, “Manhattan” is from the Lenape language, for “island of many hills.”

They were (of course), driven from their homelands and their population decimated by disease . . .

Moving south to Nowata.  From Wiki:

Some controversy exists about the meaning of the town name. The Lenape tribesmen who passed through named it “nuwita,” meaning “friendly” or “welcome.”  In the Cherokee language, the town is called ᎠᎹᏗᎧᏂᎬᎬ (A-ma-di-ka-ni-gunh-gunh, roughly), which means, “water is all gone.” The town might have been called “No Water” by white men, and then (possibly combined with the Lenape words), ended up as Nowata.

Maybe I shouldn’t go here, but I can’t help myself:  this reminds me of the Hekawi Indians, from the 60s TV show “F-Troop.”  Most of you know the joke:  the tribe was making their way west, when they got lost, and one of them asked “where the heck are we?”  That phrase was overheard by the F-Troop boys who turned it into “we’re the Hekawi.”

The F-Troop writers tried to float “Fugawi,” but the censors wouldn’t have it.

Moving up to Centralia.  Wiki let me know that the town was named by a founder after Centralia, Missouri.  I checked it out, and found that there are gads of Centralias:  CA, IL, IA, KS, MO, NY, TX, VA, WA, WV and, (most familiar to me) – PA.

OK. I’ll take a little side trip to Pennsylvania.  Most (at least some) of my readers know that there has long been an underground coal fire that has devastated the town. 

From Wiki:

The Centralia mine fire is a coal-seam fire that has been burning underneath the borough of Centralia, Pennsylvania, since at least May 27, 1962. [Two days before my 12^th birthday!] 

Its original cause is still a matter of debate.  It is burning in underground coal mines at depths of up to 300 feet over an 8-mile stretch of 3,700 acres.  At its current rate, it could continue to burn for over 250 years.

It has caused most of the town to be abandoned: the population dwindled from around 1,500 at the time the fire started to 5 in 2017.  Of course, most of the houses and buildings have been demolished.

Inquiring minds want to know:  How did it start?  Wiki (of course) chimes in:

On May 7, 1962, the Centralia Council met to discuss how the town would go about cleaning up the Centralia landfill. The landfill was in a 300-foot-wide, 75-foot-long by 50’ deep strip mine pit that had been mined in 1935.

The landfill had recently declared illegal, based on new Pennsylvania State landfill regulations, as were 8 other illegal dumps in and around Centralia.  The council’s intention was to clean up the main landfill and close the others to illegal dumping. 

Pennsylvania had passed a precautionary law in 1956 to regulate landfill use in strip mines, as landfills (which were frequently burned) were known to cause destructive mine fires. The law required a permit and regular inspection for a municipality to use such a pit.

A landfill inspector became concerned about the pit when he noticed holes in the walls and floor. The inspector informed a councilman that the pit would require filling with an incombustible material.

The town council arranged for cleanup of the strip mine landfill, but council minutes do not describe the proposed procedure. It is surmised that the usual process—setting it on fire—was not specified because state law prohibited dump fires in strip mine pits.  Nonetheless, the Centralia council set a date and hired five members of the volunteer firefighter company to “clean up” the landfill.

[Wow.  Talk about a preventable disaster.]

A fire was ignited to clean the dump on May 27, 1962, and water was used to douse the visible flames that night. However, flames were seen once more on May 29; another attempt was made to douse the fire that night. Another flare-up in the following week (June 4) caused the Centralia Fire Company to once again douse it with hoses.

 A bulldozer stirred up the garbage so that firemen could douse concealed layers of the burning waste. A few days later, a 15 foot-wide hole several feet high was found in the base of the north wall of the pit.

It is likely that this hole led to the mine fire, as it provided a pathway to the labyrinth of old mines under the borough.

The Centralia Council sent a letter to the Lehigh Valley Coal Company (LVCC) as formal notice of the fire. It is speculated that the town council decided to hide the true origin of the fire, as the true story would most likely give the LVCC an excuse to provide no help.  In the letter, the borough described the starting of a fire “of unknown origin during a period of unusually hot weather.”

Problems such as sinkholes, toxic smoke rising to the surface, impassable roads and damaged houses eventually made the town unlivable.      In 1984, the US Congress allocated $42 million ($110 million today) to relocate houses and businesses.  In 1992, the State of Pennsylvania evoked eminent domain on all properties, condemning all buildings.

Here’s a GE shot of what used to be Centralia:

Route 61, which heads south out of Centralia really took a hit, and was abandoned and rerouted:

Here’s a shot of the abandoned section of Route 61, posted on GE by Eric Chappell:

And here’s another:

I’ll head back to Oklahoma (sorry, Centralia OK) and end with this shot of the Verdigris River posted by Kristy Fox:

That’ll do it . . .

KS

Greg

© 2021 A Landing A Day

Moscow and Troy, 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 2520; A Landing A Day blog post number 964

Dan:  Today’s lat/long (N46^o 47.169’, W116^o 44.555) puts me in the southwestern portion of the Idaho panhandle:

My local landing map shows my proximity to titular Moscow and Troy:

I’m going to jump over to Google Earth (GE) for a look at my local watersheds:

I landed in the watershed of Spring Valley Creek, which flows to Big Bear Creek.  Heading to my usual streams-only map:

Big Bear Creek discharges into the Potlatch River (2^nd hit); on to the Clearwater River (9^th hit); on to the Snake (88^th hit).  Of course, the Snake discharges to the Columbia (186^th hit).

I’ve heard of the word “potlatch” (after which the Potlatch River is name) but didn’t have a clue what it meant until I went to Wiki. 

A potlatch is an elaborate practice performed by Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast of Canada and the United States.

A potlatch involves giving gifts, but also giving away or destroying wealth or valuable items in order to demonstrate a leader’s wealth and power. Potlatches are also focused on the reaffirmation of family, clan, and  the human connection with the supernatural world.

Legal proceedings may include namings, business negotiations and transactions, marriages, divorces, deaths, end of mourning, transfers of physical and especially intellectual property, adoptions, initiations, treaty proceedings, monument commemorations, and honoring of the ancestors.

Potlatches often involve music, dancing, singing, storytelling, making speeches, and often joking and games. The honoring of the supernatural and the recitation of oral histories are a central part of many potlatches.

Potlatches were historically criminalized by the Government of Canada, with Indigenous nations continuing the tradition underground despite the risk of government reprisals.  The practice has been studied by many anthropologists. Since the practice was decriminalized in 1951, the potlatch has re-emerged in some communities. In many it is still the bedrock of Indigenous governance and community live.

The word comes from the Chinook Jargon, meaning “to give away” or “a gift”; originally from the Nuu-chah-nulth word paɬaˑč, to make a ceremonial gift.

Moving back to GE, the Orange Dude was able to get a view of Spring Valley Creek just a few miles south of my landing. He doesn’t see much of a creek, but there is a sign:

My landing is about 2.5 miles up the “creek.”

I had the OD head about 13 miles south to get a look at the Potlatch.  Here’s what he sees:

Moving on to Moscow, three things caught my attention:  Moscow is a small town, pop 24,000; it is the home of the University of Idaho; and (along with the northern portion of the Idaho Panhandle) it’s in the Pacific Time Zone.  I didn’t know that! 

Here’s a map from Timebie.com:

There’s not all that much to say about Moscow, but as is my wont, here’s a little Wiki info about the name origin:

Historians have disputed on the precise origin of the name Moscow. There is no conclusive proof that it is connected to the Russian capital, though various accounts suggest it purposely evoked the Russian city or was named by Russian immigrants [name origin theory #1].

Another account claims that the name derives from a Native American tribe named “Masco” [name origin theory #2].

Early settlers reported that five local men met to choose a proper name for the town but could not agree. The postmaster, Samuel Neff, then completed the official papers for the town and chose Moscow for the name. Neff was born in Moscow, Pennsylvania, and later moved to Moscow, Iowa [name origin theory #3, which probably circles back to Moscow, Russia].

Well, duh!  Theory #3 is clearly the winner, although I’d prefer the Indian origin. . .

Enough about Moscow.  How about Troy?  From Wiki:

The community was originally known as Huffs Gulch when J. Wesley Seat homesteaded in the area in 1885.

OK, so it should have been the County “Seat!”

In 1890, area businessman John P. Vollmer rechristened the area with his own surname when he brought the railroad through.

So, it’s now Vollmer ID.

Vollmer gained much of his 30,000 acres of land by foreclosing on the bank loans of local farmers. This made him so unpopular that in 1897 the residents decided to rename the town.

Good decision!  So then what happened?

Local legend [which I generally believe] states that the name Troy was selected when a Greek railroad worker offered free shots of whiskey to any who would support the name.

I love it!  That would’ve gotten my vote!  But I’ll admit I don’t know much about Troy, or why a Greek railroad worker would be so hepped up on the name “Troy,” that he was offering free drinks.

Here’s what I think I know:  Troy was located in western Turkey, was a powerful city-state, got into a war with somebody (The Trojan War), which was won by one side or the other in a decisive battle when a huge fake horse was brought in that held a bunch of soldiers (The Trojan Horse).

I think there are a few gaps  . .

From Wiki:

Troy was the setting of the Trojan War described in the Greek Epic Cycle – the Illiad and Odyssey – epic poems attributed to Homer.

I’ll get back to the Trojan War, but first this, about Homer (from Wiki, of course):

Homer was the presumed author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, two epic poems that are the foundational works of ancient Greek literature. The Iliad is set during the Trojan War, the ten-year siege of the city of Troy by a coalition of Greek kingdoms. The Iliad focuses on a quarrel between King Agamemnon and the warrior Achilles lasting a few weeks during the last year of the war. The Odyssey focuses on the ten-year journey home of Odysseus, king of Ithaca, after the fall of Troy.

Many accounts of Homer’s life circulated in classical antiquity, the most widespread being that he was a blind bard from Ionia, a region of central coastal Anatolia in present-day Turkey.

The Homeric Question – concerning by whom, when, where and under what circumstances the Iliad and Odyssey were composed – continues to be debated. Broadly speaking, modern scholarly opinion falls into two groups. One holds that most of the Iliad and (according to some) the Odyssey are the works of a single poet of genius. The other considers the Homeric poems to be the result of a process of working and reworking by many contributors, and that “Homer” is best seen as a label for an entire tradition.

It is generally accepted that the poems were composed at some point around the late eighth or early seventh century BC.

OK, good enough.  So, Homer was a literary genius who wrote two epic poems around the seventh or eighth century BC.

Talking about dates in the BC era, it’s a little confusing.  Think about it.  The 8^th century would begin on 800 BC (and the next year would be 799 BC).  The “late eight century” would be, say, around 700.  The next year would be 699, or “early seventh century.”  Right?  This makes my head hurt!

Back to Wiki:  The Trojan war, as narrated primarily through the Iliad, is one of the most important events in Greek mythology. The core of the Iliad describes a period of four days and two nights in the tenth year of the decade-long siege of Troy; the Odyssey describes the journey home of Odysseus, one of the war’s heroes.

Whether there is any historical reality behind the Trojan War remains an open question, although many scholars believe that there is a historical core to the tale.   Those who believe that the stories of the Trojan War are derived from a specific historical conflict usually date it to the 12th or 11th century BC.

According to the Iliad, the end of the war came with one final plan. Odysseus devised a new ruse—a giant hollow wooden horse, an animal that was sacred to the Trojans.

The hollow horse was filled with soldiers led by Odysseus. The rest of the Greek army burned their camp camp and sailed away to the nearby island of Tenedos,

When the Trojans discovered that the Greeks were gone, they believed that the war was over, since they were unaware that the Greeks were hiding nearby.   The Trojans “joyfully dragged the horse inside the city”, while they debated what to do with it. Some thought they ought to hurl it down from the rocks, others thought they should burn it.

In the end, the Trojans decided to keep the horse and turned to a night of mad revelry and celebration..  Simon, a Greek spy, signaled the fleet stationed at Tenedos when “it was midnight and the clear moon was rising” and the soldiers from inside the horse emerged and killed the guards.

The fleet carrying the remainder of the soldiers returned to Troy, and the Greeks entered the city and killed the sleeping population. A great massacre followed which continued into the day.

From the Iliad:

Blood ran in torrents, drenched was all the earth,
As Trojans and their alien helpers died.
Here were men lying quelled by bitter death
All up and down the city in their blood.

The Trojans, fueled with desperation, fought back fiercely, despite being disorganized and leaderless. With the fighting at its height, some donned fallen enemies’ attire and launched surprise counterattacks in the chaotic street fighting. Other defenders hurled down roof tiles and anything else heavy down on the rampaging attackers. The outlook was grim though, and eventually the remaining defenders were destroyed along with the whole city.

Just to put things into perspective, here’s a GE shot of the location of Ancient Troy & the nearby island of Tenedos:

And a closer view:

From Wiki, about Troy archeology:

With the rise of a more critical, scientific view of history, Troy and the Trojan War were consigned to legend.  However, not everyone agreed with this view. Dissidents believing the Iliad, Odyssey, and other Greek texts recounting the Trojan War to be historical records were to become the first archaeologists at Troy.  For centuries the true location of ancient Troy remained the subject of interest and speculation.  Travelers in Anatolia looked for possible locations. Because of its name, the Troad peninsula [where it turns out that Troy actually is] was highly suspect.

Searchers in the 16^th, 17^th and 18^th centuries identified several potential locations, all close to the currently accepted location. In 1822, the Scottish journalist Charles Maclaren was the first to identify with confidence the position of the city as it is now known.  In the second half of the 19th century archaeological excavation of the site believed to have been Homeric Troy began.

There was all sorts of drama, incriminations and re-incriminations among some early archeologists that I won’t go into. 

Back to Wiki:

German archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann sincerely believed that the literary events of the works of Homer could be verified archaeologically. A divorced man in his 40s who had acquired some wealth as a merchant in Russia, he decided to use the wealth to follow his boyhood interest in finding and verifying the city of Troy. In 1868, leaving his former life behind, he advertised for a wife whose skills and interest were on a par with his own.  He found Sophia – just 17 at the time – but together they excavated Troy, sparing no expense.

Heinrich began by excavating a trench across the mound of Hisarlik to the depth of the settlements, today called “Schliemann’s Trench.” In 1871–73 and 1878–79, he discovered the ruins of a series of ancient cities dating from the Bronze Age to the Roman period. He declared one of these cities—at first Troy I, later Troy II—to be the city of Troy, and this identification was widely accepted at that time. Subsequent archaeologists at the site were to revise the date upward; nevertheless, the main identification of Troy as the city of the Iliad, and the scheme of the layers, have been kept.

Some of the most notable artifacts found by Schliemann are known as Priam’s Treasure. Most of these pieces were crafted from gold and other precious metals.

Here’s a picture of Sophia Schliemann wearing the “Jewels of Helen,” a famed piece in the Priam’s Treasure collection.

Here are some pictures of the ruins of Ancient Troy:

The UNESCO World Heritage Site at Troy in Turkey

There you have it.  So, I suspect that you’ll fall into one of three camps:  1).  Like me, knew very little about Troy, and appreciated learning about it; 2).  Don’t give a damn, and think that this was a lousy portion of the post; or 3).  Knew more about Troy than I’ll ever know – therefore also thinking that this was a lousy portion of the post.

Moving right along . . . I landed about a half mile east of Spring Valley Reservoir.  There are three pictures of the reservoir posted on GE (the three blue icons):

First this, by Jason Abbott:

And this by The Black K-Night:

And finally, this by Milad Haddadi:

That’ll do it . . .

KS

Greg

© 2021 A Landing A Day

Tuff Times in Lake County, 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 2519; A Landing A Day blog post number 963

Dan:  Today’s lat/long (N43^o 9.764’, W120^o 51.834) puts me in south-central Oregon::

Before taking a look at my local landing map, a word about the title.  This marks the first time (I believe), that I didn’t reference a particular location in the title (and my first titular pun).  Obviouisly, I was taken with the pun, and didn’t want to muck it up with particular place names.

That said, here’s my very local landing map:

Hmmmm.  Table Rock, eh?  And zooming back:

As I zoom out, Table Rock (as a minor geographical feature), disappears from my StreetAtlas map, but now we can see Fort Rock.  Although originally not on the map, I added the Hole-in-the-Ground.   Fort Rock is a town named after a nearby geological feature.  These two Rocks (Table & Fort) and one Hole are the sole features of this post.

But first things first – the watershed analysis.  My streams-only map shows me nothing, so I’ll head right over to Google Earth (GE):

Getting the watershed analysis out of the way quickly:  any rain that falls on my landing spot makes its way east to a low spot, a small playa.  But wait a second!  Is that a volcano just west of my landing?  Table Rock is a funny name for a volcano!  Let’s take another look:

Well, it sure looks like a volcano.  Obviously, I’ll have more info on Table Rock in a bit.  But first, the Orange Dude is letting me know he can get a pretty good view of my landing (as well as the so-called volcano):

Here’s what he sees:

So a little internet research indicates that Table Rock is in fact a volcanic structure, but it’s not a typical  “volcano” per se.  It’s actually a “tuff cone,” an erosional remnant of a “maar volcano.”   So.  Where to begin?  I’ll start with tuff.

Very simply, the rock “tuff” occurs when volcanic ash (ejected in an eruption) falls to the ground and ends up consolidating into a rock.  So, what kind of volcanos belch out ash?  And what’s a maar?  [Side note:  I’m a geologist, and I had no clue about maars.  I’m sure if went to OSU or the U of O and studied geology, I’d be all over it.]

From Wiki:

A maar is a volcanic crater (typically broad with relatively low relief) caused by an eruption which occurs when groundwater comes into contact with hot lava or magma. A maar characteristically fills with water to form a relatively shallow crater lake which may also be called a maar.

So, we need a wet landscape in a volcanically-active area.  But I landed in a desert!  But there are a couple of lakes nearby:

It turns out that these lakes are remnants of a much larger lake that was around for many thousands of years:  Lake Chewaucan (the tan area below) covered 460 square miles and was up to 375 feet deep:

So.  You superimpose a magmatic hotspot and an area with wetlands and lakes, and what happens?  Maar volcanoes.  The hot magma wells up, encounters groundwater, and kaboom!  A bubble of steam explodes, and pulverizes magma and adjacent rock into ash.  This ash settles out in some kind of circular (ring) structure around the center of the explosion.  The shape of these tuff maar deposits can vary from a fairly steep cone (Table Rock), to a ring (Fort Rock) to a crater (The Hole-in-the-Ground). 

I’ll start with Table Rock.  I couldn’t find a good photo of Table Rock, but I did find this painting, by Bob Fisher (from the Hassen Fisher Studio:

I maneuvered myself using GE to figure out where Bob Fisher was when he did the painting.  Here’s what I found:

So, here’s what I think about how Table Rock was formed.  It seems to me that the blobs of magma that rise up and contact the groundwater are different sizes.  If there’s a small one, it causes relatively small eruptions.  If these eruptions are rather low-key but continue at the same spot for a long time, the spewed ash doesn’t go very far, but rather forms a “tuff cone” like Table Rock. 

And I read that the flat top of Table Rock is basalt (i.e., hardened magma, but not tuff).  At the end of the eruption cycle, the magma welled up, plugged the eruption vent, and formed the flat table top that gave the mountain its name.  Here’s a USGS cross-section:

The “lava lake” is where the upwelling magma ended up.  Moving up to Fort Rock.  It turns out that I featured Fort Rock in a 2010 post.  From that post:

Always on the lookout for interesting geological features, I discovered Fort Rock, located about 50 miles away.  “Fifty miles!” you might say in disbelief, “You never stray that far from your landing!”  Guilty as charged.  But I downloaded some cool information and pictures before I realized how far away it was.  So anyway, this about Fort Rock from Wiki:

Fort Rock is a volcanic landmark called a tuff ring, located on an Ice age lake bed in north Lake County, Oregon, United States.  The ring is nearly a mile in diameter and stands about 200 feet high above the surrounding plain.  Its tall, straight sides resemble the palisades of a fort, thus giving the rock its name. The region of Fort Rock Basin contains about 40 such tuff rings.

Fort Rock was created when basalt magma rose to the surface and encountered the wet muds of a lake bottom. Powered by a jet of steam, molten basalt was blown into the air, creating a fountain of hot lava particles and frothy ash. The pieces and blobs of hot lava and ash rained down around the vent and formed a saucer-shaped ring of volcanic ash sitting like an island in the lake waters. Waves from the lake waters eroded the outside of the ring, cutting the steep cliffs into terraces 66 feet above the floor of Fort Rock Valley.

Recent estimates put the age of the formation Fort Rock at 50,000 to 100,000 years. This coincides with a period of time when large lakes filled the valleys of central Oregon and much of the Great Basin of the western United States. At its maximum, the water in Fort Rock Lake was estimated to cover nearly 900 square miles and was about 150 feet deep where the Fort Rock tuff ring formed.

An extensive terrace on the side of Fort Rock marks one lakeshore about 14,000 years ago. Even higher water levels are recorded on the tuff cliffs (from about 20,000 years ago) and at one point only the tops of the tuff ring were exposed as rocky islands in this inland sea.

From SouthernOregon.com, here’s a pic:

And now, moving on to The Hole-In-The-Ground, a larger feature (a crater about a mile across).  From a USGS field trip guide:

The crater was formed in a few days or weeks by a series of explosions that were triggered when basaltic magma rose along a fissure and came into contact with abundant ground water at a depth of 300 to 500 m below the surface.

Here are a couple of shots of the Hole:

And a rough cross-section (from USGS):

The material symbolized with “+” is magma, and yes, there’s tuff in the walls of the crater.  Note that this is truly a “hole in the ground.”  Here’s a GE shot, showing some typical elevations:

I’ll close with this windshield shot of Table Rock by Elyse Douglas:

That’ll do it . . .

KS

Greg

© 2021 A Landing A Day