Rome, New York

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 2570; A Landing A Day blog post number 1015

Dan:  Today’s lat/long (N45^o 51.073’, W97^o 35.710) puts me in central New York:

And here’s my local landing map:

My streams only map shows that I landed in the watershed of Upper  Dry Brook:

The Upper Dry flows into Ninemile Ck, which apparently flows into the Erie Canal (which I’m ignoring for now).  But the Mohawk River is right there (5^th hit, making the Mohawk the 180^th river on my list of rivers with 5 or more hits). It parallels the canal and is obviously the natural river that Ninemile Creek used to flow in to.

Although not shown, the Mohawk heads due east towards Albany, where it discharges to the Hudson River (19^th hit).

I sent the Orange Dude out to take a look at the Upper Dry Creek, which he did.  He reported back that it wasn’t worth taking up space in my blog, but that he could get a decent look at Ninemile Ck:

And here’s what he sees:

Both the OD and I wanted to check out the intersection of Ninemile Ck and the Erie Canal.  It turns out that OD could get a look down the Creek and see the Canal:

There’s a lot going on here.  But before going into it, here’s what the OD could see (Ninemile Creek with the Erie Canal in the distance):

Looking back up at the aerial shot:  obviously, Ninemile Creek in fact runs right into the canal.  But canal-builders – when the canal they’re building runs along a river – have to figure out what to do with tributary streams.  In some cases, they actually put the canal on a bridge that crosses the tributary, but in other cases, like this one, they allow the stream to discharge to the canal.

But when you have a fairly major tributary like Ninemile Creek discharging into the canal, it’s a double-edged sword.  On the positive side, it can be used to supply water to the canal, but at the same time you don’t want it putting too much water into the canal.  So in this case, the canal builders put an overflow structure nearby so that the canal water level would be maintained at the elevation that the engineers wanted, and excess water simply flowed down to the Mohawk River.

I Googled Ninemile Creek and the Erie Canal and found out nothing about the creek near my landing.  But interestingly, there’s another Ninemile Creek near Syracuse about 50 miles west of my landing where the canal builders did what I mentioned above:  they put the canal on a aqueduct over the creek.

The aqueduct was built in 1841 with stone arches, which survive to this day.  The aqueduct (which hadn’t had a canal boat go over it since 1917 because the water-carrying part of the aqueduct failed) was restored in 2009.  Here’s a picture from ErieCanalWay.org:

Oh yea.  You may have noticed that I landed in the middle of a substantial patch of woods, so the OD and I gave up on getting a look at my landing spot.

Very much related to the Erie Canal, I read this about why Rome developed where it did (from Wiki):

Rome was founded along an ancient Native American portage path known as the Oneida Carrying Place, Deo-Wain-Sta, or The Great Carrying Place to the Six Nations (Iroquois).

The portage was part of an ancient trade route joining the Great Lakes to the Atlantic Ocean, and was located between the Mohawk River to the east, which flows east to the Hudson River; and Wood Creek to the west, which flows into the Oswego River and thence to Lake Ontario.

Now located within the modern Rome city limits, this short portage path was the only overland section of a water trade route stretching more than 1,000 miles between Lake Ontario and the lower Hudson. Travelers and traders coming up the Mohawk River from the Hudson had to transfer their cargo and boats and transport them overland between 1.7 and six miles (depending on the season) to continue west on Wood Creek to Oneida Lake which was drained by the Oswego River that ultimately flowed into Lake Ontario.

Very cool.  So, the canal builders basically chose the same route to build the Erie Canal.  Of course, the canal needed locks so that the canal boats could be raised and lowered.  Anyway, here’s a Wiki map showing the Canal Route:

The canal builders didn’t want to just connect to Lake Ontario because of that minor bump in the road between Lake Ontario and Lake Erie:  Niagara Falls.  So while the canal does have a spur route up to Lake Ontario (the Oswego Canal), its primary route had to make its way all the way west to Lake Erie (with unobstructed access to the remainder of the Great Lakes).

Also from Wiki, here’s a profile:

I circled Rome, and you can see that it’s on what appears to be a relatively minor high area.  You can also see what a huge job it was to take the canal to Lake Erie rather than just to Lake Ontario.  

Speaking of the huge job, I also circled the “Niagara Escarpment,” which is a persistant cliff that runs along the south shore of Lake Ontario and is the cause of the Niagara Falls.  Getting the canal past the escarpment required a series of 5 back-to-back locks.  Here’s a map of the escarpment showing that it extends well past the south shore of Lake Ontario:

Besides Niagara Falls, the escarpment is responsible for many of the islands and peninsulas in Lakes Huron and Michigan.  The escarpment is caused by the fact that south of the escarpment is a mostly-flat-lying dolomite, a hard rock type relatively resistant to erosion.  North of the escarpment are softer, more erodible shales (also mostly-flat-lying).  Through the eons, the contact between the two rock types becomes an escarpment (maybe drop-off is a better word than cliff).  Here’s a dramatic shot of the escarpment in Ontario, where it is a cliff:

And here’s one of three sets of waterfalls as the Genesee River tumbles down the escarpment in Rochester (from TravelBlog.org):

Before I give up on the Erie Canal, (and speaking of Rochester) take a look at this streams-only map near Rochester:

You can see that the Erie Canal goes right across the Genesee River (below the waterfalls).  How did they manage that?  Here’s how (from Wiki; 1890 photo):

Do you see what you’re looking at?  The canal crosses the river! 

Moving right along.  Under “Notable People” for Rome, I noticed this:

Mary Edward Walker (1832–1919), feminist, abolitionist, prohibitionist, alleged spy, prisoner of war, surgeon, and, as of 2016, only woman to receive the Medal of Honor.

That’s quite the resume!  I needed to take a closer look . . .

I found an article about her in a website for Sacramento California LGBT military veterans (sacrainbowsetrep.com).  I present it in full, although I added a couple of paragraphs about her marriage and Rome NY medical practice from an article in the Philadelphia Gay News.

A steadfast feminist, Mary Edwards Walker defied nineteenth century patriarchal society by refusing to live within the confines of gender-based roles – and generally dressing more like a man than in traditional feminine garb of the time. As a student, physician, and activist, Walker defined her place in society while paving the way for future generations of women.

Diverging from the norm, Walker’s liberal parents encouraged her and her five sisters to attend college and pursue careers. Her father, a self-taught doctor and advocate of women’s dress reform, largely influenced Walker.

In 1855, Mary Edwards Walker graduated from Syracuse Medical College, becoming one of only a few female physicians in the country.

In 1856, Walker married former student Albert Miller while wearing a man’s coat and trousers. Keeping her last name, Walker and Miller moved to Rome, N.Y., where they began a joint medical practice. But it seemed people of the time were not receptive to seeing a woman physician, and their practice stalled.

Their marriage also suffered since Miller was unfaithful. They separated four years later, and Walker struck out on her own and established her own practice. One of her ads in the Rome Sentinel read, “Those … who prefer the skill of a female physician … have now an excellent opportunity to make their choice.”

At the onset of the Civil War, having been denied a position as an Army medical officer, Walker volunteered as a nurse for the Union Army. During the next few years she served in several battles including the First Battle of Bull Run and the Battle of Fredericksburg. Despite her service, Walker often found herself at the scrutiny of male superiors who questioned her credentials and her appearance.

The Confederate Army captured Walker in 1864 and held her captive for four months.  Shortly following her release, Walker became the first woman commissioned as an Army Surgeon, earning a monthly salary of one hundred dollars.

The following year, Walker became the first and only woman in history to receive a Medal of Honor, the highest military honor in the United States. The bill, which President Andrew Johnson signed upon the recommendation of two major generals, reads:

Whereas it appears from official reports that Dr. Mary E. Walker, a graduate of medicine, has rendered valuable service to the Government, and has devoted herself with much patriotic zeal to the sick and wounded soldiers, both in the field and hospitals, to the detriment of her own health, and has also endured hardships as a prisoner of war four months in Southern prison while acting as contract surgeon.  It is therefore ordered that the Medal of Honor be given to Dr. Mary E. Walker.

After the war, Walker continued to live a nonconformist lifestyle. A strong advocate of dress reform, she wore men’s clothing exclusively and was arrested on several occasions for impersonating a man. In 1917, Congress revoked her Medal of Honor after revising the criteria for receiving the medal. Walker refused to return the medal, wearing it until her death.  The Medal of Honor was reinstated in 1977.

I’ll close with this shot of the Erie Canal, taken just south of my landing by Mary Devenzo:

That’ll do it . . .

KS

Greg

© 2022 A Landing A Day

Kidder and Britton, South Dakota

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 2569; A Landing A Day blog post number 1014

Dan:  Today’s lat/long (N45^o 51.073’, W97^o 35.710) puts me in northeast South Dakota:

This is my second SD landing in a row (my 73^rd “double” 3^rd for SD), and my 4^th Dakota landing out of my last six landings.

Here’s my local landing map:

My streams-only map didn’t tell me diddlysquat, so off to Google Maps (GE) I went:

I figured that a drop of rain that fell on my landing spot made its way westward to White Lake.  I found the dam and the outlet, and followed the outlet stream north until GE finally let me know it was the Wild Rice Creek:

I noticed the interesting swirls in the farm field, so I backed up to get a better look:

Cool, eh? That farmer had a plan!

I followed Wild Rice Creek north until it discharged into the Wild Rice River up in North Dakota.  As I always do, I checked out my landing spreadsheet to see how many times I had landed in the Wild Rice River watershed.  The answer was 8.  But as I was perusing my spreadsheet, I noticed that while some of my Wild Rice landings were in North Dakota, some were in Minnesota.  No matter MN or ND, the Wild Rice discharged to the Red River of the North.

“Wait a sec,” I thought to myself.  “The Red River forms the boundary between North Dakota and Minnesota.  How could the same river be present in both states, yet discharge to the river that is the boundary between the two states?”

The answer is a resounding “No way.”  As you may have figured out by now, there are in fact two entirely separate Wild Rice Rivers, one in Minnesota and one in North Dakota!  Here’s the watershed-tracking portion of my landing spreadsheet before I realized my error:

And here’s the now-corrected version:

Phew!  What an inexcusable mistake I was making!  Getting these things right are very important to me, for reasons that only my psychoanalyst (if I had one) would understand.

Just to finish up:  as I’m sure you know, the Nelson meanders its way northeastward across Canada, and discharges in the Hudson Bay.

The Orange Dude raised his hand and said “Don’t forget about me!” So, I sent him just downstream from White Lake to get a look at Wild Rice Creek:

Although he was freezing cold (and his teeth were chattering), he was able to share this view:

I had to send him way up to North Dakota (where it was even colder) to get a look at the Wild Rice River:

The OD was happy to be off duty and move on to some virtually warmer place.

Kidder was my closest town, so of course I checked out Wiki:

The streets of Kidder are named after trees (ex. Pine St., Elm St.), while the avenues are named after fruits (ex. Plum Ave., Apple Ave.)

Really?  I’ve never seen that before!  Let’s look:

And both the trees and the fruit are in alphabetical order! And yes, they put up street signs:

Before moving on to the street names in Britton, here’s a back-in-the-day shot of Kidder:

Couldn’t the sign painter have left enough space between Clothing & Hardware to put an &?

Moving on to Britton (a much larger town):

All numbers!  And yes, they have street signs as well:

I think it would be cool to live on the corner of Maple & Cherry, but also cool to be on the corner of 5^th and 5^th . . .

And here’s Britton’s back-in-the-day shot – “Gala Day,” 1910:

Main Street on Gala Day Britton, SD

FYI, I tried to get some information about “Gala Day.” My guess is that Britton’s event is related to traditional Scottish celebrations of the same name, which involves the “coronation” of a king and queen.

Without going too far afield, I couldn’t find any other interesting tidbits about nearby towns.  But I couldn’t help but notice that there’s a large region just south and east of my landing that is loaded with lakes.  I’m a geologist, and I need to know what’s going on.  With a little bit of research, I discovered that the lake-filled region is known as Coteau des P:rairies:

This translates literally to “Hill (or slope) of the Prairies.”  I found a website entitled “A Virtual Field Trip to the Coteau des Praieies,” from railsback.org:

Let’s begin with the best view of the Coteau des Prairies, the view from above.  On the U.S. Geological Survey’s digital shaded relief image, the Coteau des Prairies is a striking feature, living up to its name as the “Slope of the Prairies”.

The Coteau des Prairies is a little less striking in the NASA MODIS true-color image (essentially the GE image). The northern tip of the Coteau des Prairies just reaches the east-west border between North Dakota and South Dakota.  The dark spots atop the Coteau des Prairies are ponds and lakes.

So what is this thing again?  It’s the Coteau des Prairies, the divide between the paths of two streams of glacial ice during the Wisconsinan glaciation of North America:

OK, nice graphic, but the reason for higher elevations and the lakes isn’t explained.  I’ll head over to Wiki to get a couple of looks at the Cotes des Prairies:

And a more distant view:

You can see it’s a real thing…

Looking for some real geology, I found SouthDakotaGlacialLakes.com.  It had an article entitled “Glacial Lakes and Prairies”  that explained what’s going on.  I’ll quote some (in black) and paraphrase some in my own words (in blue):

About 20 thousand years ago, the last in a series of glaciers moved across North America like a pancake spreading on a griddle.  As more and more snow fell at its center, the glacier squeezed outward in all directions and its edges crept farther and farther over the land.

I like the pancake batter and the griddle analogy!

When the ice entered South Dakota, it encountered a region of elevated bedrock, which split the ice into two lobes (like we saw in the map above). 

Geologist believe that, near Aberdeen, the glacier piled up 1600 feet of ice.  (That seems low to me.) Since just one cubic foot of ice weighs about 57 pounds, a glacier 1600 feet thick would exert 45 tons of pressure on every square foot of ground it covers.   And when it moves-even just a few inches a day-it acts like a bulldozer, scouring and scraping the land, leveling high places and filling in low ones, smoothing some surfaces and gouging others.

As the split lobes of ice bulldozed their way south, they pushed the gouged materials off to the sides.  The area with the higher-elevation bedrock, although not glaciated, was besieged with massive amounts of glacial debris – rocks, gravel, sand and silt – and it came in from both the east and the west.  These edge-of-the-glacier deposits are called moraines.  Through multiple glaciations, the moraine deposits kept piling up, until they reached nearly 1000 feet thick.

Due to the gouging under the tongues of ice, the areas east and west of the Coteau des Prairies remained at lower elevations.

Because the moraines were deposited willy nilly, the land surface was very irregular, resulting in poorly-defined drainage, with the numerous lakes and ponds that we see today.

I’ll finish up with a return visit to Britton, the hometown of one Dallas Goedert, who is a starting tight end for the Philadelphia Eagles (my team).  From Wiki:

Goedert attended Britton-Hecla High School in Britton, South Dakota. He played football, soccer, and basketball for the Braves athletic teams in high school.  His father, a huge Dallas Cowboys fan, named him after the team.

If you ask an Eagles fan who their number one rival is, they’d say the Dallas Cowboys.  If the word “hate” comes up, it’ll likewise be the Cowboys.  So, how about that, Dad?!?  You’re a huge Cowboy’s fan, and your son ends up playing for the hated Eagles.  And think about the odds.  The internet (in all of its wisdom) tells us that 8 of every 10,000 senior high school football players make it to the NFL.  And then, of the 32 teams, he ends up on the Eagles.  Doing the math, 8 of every 320,000 (or 1 in 40,000) high school players will play for the Eagles. . .

Perusing photos posted on GE, I found this apropos shot by Patrick Tschetter, looking east from the top edge of the Coteau des Prairies:

I’ll close with this shot of an island in Roy Lake (one of the Coteau des Prairies lakes) by Lisa MacConnell, about 13 miles SE of my landing:

That’ll do it . . .

KS

Greg

© 2022 A Landing A Day

South Dakota Towns between Wall and Midland along US Rt. 14

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 2568; A Landing A Day blog post number 1013

Dan:  Today’s lat/long (N44^o 6.917’, W101^o 56.592) puts me in southwest South Dakota:

My local landing map shows a string of towns along US Rt. 14 – and, no surprise here – also along a rail line:

My streams-only map:

You can see that I landed in the watershed of the North Fork of the Bad River (1^st hit ever; the 1266^th named river on my landing spreadsheet); to the Bad (3^rd hit); to the Missouri (452^nd hit; and, ever closing in on 1,000 hits, the Mississippi (997^th hit).

Over on Google Earth (GE), the Orange Dude and I tried to get a look at the N Fk Bad River.  We sorta kinda could, but all we could see was a line of bushes & trees in the prairie; no water.  The OD looked for an aesthetically-pleasing shot, but could find none.  In fact, he had to go 40 miles east – all the way to Midland – to et a decent look at the Bad.  Here’s what the OD could see there:

The OD’s only comment:  “It doesn’t look too bad from here…”

The name of the river in the Native Lakota language translates to – you guessed it – “bad river.”  Per Wiki, a band of Lakota were camped near the river when a flash flood killed many people and horses.  Ergo – it must be a bad river.

When I landed previously in the Bad River watershed, I quoted an earlier (but way different) Wiki story:

 Its name was given by the early settlers due to one major characteristic. For much of its length, the river runs in between deeply cut earthen banks, and for much of the year, in that relatively rain-poor area, it will run nearly empty and can be walked across in a few steps. However, in time of rain it can go from that state to a raging torrent with amazing quickness, with “bad’ consequences for the unwary person, cattle drinking from it, etc.

But in the same post, I came up with this:

Actually, the above explanation for the name seems a little lame.  Much more likely (to me, anyway) is yet another Lewis & Clark connection.  First, here’s a map that shows a large island in the Missouri, La Framboise Island, located at the mouth of the Bad River:

It turns out that Lewis and Clark were near present day Pierre in September of 1804.  They were having a tense confrontation with some Teton Sioux Indians.  I’m not sure why we’re stuck with Clark’s diary (Lewis was much more literate), but anyway, here are Clark’s words (from lewisandclarktrail.com):

“We raised a Flag Staff & made a orning [awning] or shade on a Sand bar in the mouth of Teton River [I assume this is what was later named the Bad River], for the purpose of Speeking with the Indians…  we feel much at loss for the want of an interpreter the one we have can Speek but little … met in Council … envited those Cheifs on board to Show them our boat; soon began to be troublesom… Proceeded on about 1 mile & anchored out off a Willow Island,  I call this Island bad humered Island as we were in a bad humer.”   Captain Clark

So, Captain Clark named what is today LaFramboise Island “Bad Humor Island.”  Well, there you have it!!  What other reason do you need to name the river the “Bad River”?

Back to now: Before I forget, I needed to send the OD to get a look at my landing. He could get pretty close, and in fact could get a good look:

And here’s what he sees:

Moving on to my titular string of towns along U.S. Route 14. I think I’ll start with the western-most (and most well known):  Wall.  For those of my readers who are familiar with Wall, I’m sure the phrase “Home of Wall Drug” pops into their mind. 

Here’s Wiki’s opening paragraph about Wall Drug:

Wall Drug Store, often called simply Wall Drug, is a roadside attraction and tourist stop located in the town of Wall, South Dakota, adjacent to Badlands National Park. Wall Drug consists of a collection of cowboy-themed stores, including a drug store, gift shop, several restaurants, and various other stores, as well as an art gallery and an 80-foot brontosaurus sculpture  The New York Times has described Wall Drug as “a sprawling tourist attraction of international renown that draws some two million annual visitors to a remote town.”

The OD said, “OK, OK, I know that you’re going to send me to Wall to check out Wall Drug.  I’m on my way.” Here’s what he saw:

All of the establishments (on both sides of the street) are Wall Drug.  It started out as a modest drug store back in the 1930s.  The owner had the idea to offer free ice water, and to put signs up along highways advertising Wall Drug and its free ice water.  Needless to say, that was a great idea.

Back in 1975, I was a student at Kent State University, getting my Master’s degree in geology.  I had to attend Kent’s 6-week “geology field camp,” which took place each year in the Black Hills – just 50 miles west of Wall.  We stayed in a dorm at the South Dakota School of Mines in Rapid City. 

A fellow geology student owned a red VW bug that he was driving from Kent to Rapid City.  He was looking for a passenger to defray expenses, so I joined him.  When we hopped on the Ohio Turnpike (aka I-80/90), I immediately noticed an annoying characteristic of his driving.  Let’s say he was going 70 mph in the right lane.  If he came up on a driver going 65, he would slow down to that speed, but not pass.  Then, someone was going 60.  You can guess what he did.  This went on for miles and miles, and it was driving me crazy.  I noted that he was not relaxed behind the wheel, and I figured that he didn’t enjoy driving. 

At our first stop, I said, “Want me to drive?”  When he replied “sure,” I breathed a sigh of relief.  I drove all the way to Rapid City, drove every day to our field locations (including western Wyoming), and all the way back to Kent. 

On our way out west, as we got closer to the Black Hills, we began to see signs for Wall Drug and free ice water — beginning in Minnesota, I think.  Every sign (and there were dozens of them) presented the mileage remaining to Wall Drug.  So, of course, like millions before and after us, we dutifully got off I-90 at Wall, and made our way to Wall Drug.

Beyond the fact that we went, I remember nothing about Wall Drug.  I probably spent a a few bucks . . .

We must have had a little time on our hands, because I also remember heading south to the South Dakota Badlands:

The Badlands are very cool.  They’re an other-worldly landscape created by erosion of semi-consolidated mostly fine grained sediments in relatively high-elevation areas.  Badlands are especially prevalent in areas that are generally dry, but have occasional heavy downpours. 

Here are a couple of pics from Black Hills Badlands.com:

Heading east out of Wall, one comes to Cottonwood (pop 11).  Wiki had this to say (and little else):

Residents voted 7 to 4 in 2016 opposing dissolution of the town.[7]

I usually delete the reference number (7 in this case).  But reference 7 was an article in the Rapid City Journal that was clickable.  Before I could read any more than the headline, the website demanded that I subscribe in a pop-up that covered the entire page.  I managed to get this screen shot during the fraction of a second that the article was visible:

And no, (sorry Rapid City Journal), I won’t subscribe . . .

Here’s a GE shot of the town, showing where the OD put himself to see something interesting:

And here’s the interesting thing he saw:

Heading east, we get to Philip – much more substantial with a population of nearly 800.  The town was named after James “Scotty” Philip, who had his own Wiki page.  He is best known as the “Man who Saved the Buffalo.”  From Wiki:

While he was building his cattle herd, Scotty Philip met Pete Dupree, whose son Fred had rescued 5 bison calves from an 1881 buffalo hunt along the Grand River.   After Dupree’s death, Philip decided to preserve the species from potential extinction, and in 1899 he purchased Dupree’s herd, which now numbered 74 head.

In 1902, Philip prepared a special pasture for the bison along the western side of the Missouri River.

He died suddenly on July 23, 1911: by that time the herd had grown to approximately a thousand head. He was buried on a family cemetery near his buffalo pasture. As the funeral procession passed, some of the bison came down out of the hills. Newspapers of the time suggested the bison were “showing their respect to the man who had saved them”.

Bison from Philip’s herd helped restock herds throughout the United States, including the large herd at Custer State Park.

From TravelSouthDakota.com, here’s a picture of the annual bison round-up at Custer State Park.  Thanks, Scotty!

Wiki tells us that Philip is the hometown of a Medal of Honor Winner who served in the Vietnam War, Patrick Henry Brady.  He was an ambulance helicopter pilot and one of his job was to pick-up injured soldiers and get them to medical treatment.

Here’s his citation, verbatim (take a deep breath and read this carefully):

For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity in action at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty, Maj. BRADY distinguished himself while serving in the Republic of Vietnam commanding a UH-1H ambulance helicopter, volunteered to rescue wounded men from a site in enemy held territory which was reported to be heavily defended and to be blanketed by fog.

To reach the site he descended through heavy fog and smoke and hovered slowly along a valley trail, turning his ship sideward to blow away the fog with the backwash from his rotor blades. Despite the unchallenged, close-range enemy fire, he found the dangerously small site, where he successfully landed and evacuated 2 badly wounded South Vietnamese soldiers.

He was then called to another area completely covered by dense fog where American casualties lay only 50 meters from the enemy. Two aircraft had previously been shot down and others had made unsuccessful attempts to reach this site earlier in the day.

With unmatched skill and extraordinary courage, Maj. BRADY made 4 flights to this embattled landing zone and successfully rescued all the wounded.

On his third mission of the day Maj. Brady once again landed at a site surrounded by the enemy. The friendly ground force, pinned down by enemy fire, had been unable to reach and secure the landing zone. Although his aircraft had been badly damaged and his controls partially shot away during his initial entry into this area, he returned minutes later and rescued the remaining injured.

Shortly thereafter, obtaining a replacement aircraft, Maj. BRADY was requested to land in an enemy minefield where a platoon of American soldiers was trapped. A mine detonated near his helicopter, wounding 2 crew members and damaging his ship. In spite of this, he managed to fly 6 severely injured patients to medical aid. Throughout that day Maj. BRADY utilized 3 helicopters to evacuate a total of 51 seriously wounded men, many of whom would have perished without prompt medical treatment. Maj. BRADY’S bravery was in the highest traditions of the military service and reflects great credit upon himself and the U.S. Army.

Wow. Major BRADY, I’m speechless. I was in the 1969 draft lottery, but one of the lucky ones with a number above 200 (mine was 225). I was acutely aware of the war, and the sacrifices made by our soldiers.

Continuing our eastward jaunt, we come to Nowlin.  From Wiki:

A post office called Nowlin was established in 1890, and remained in operation until it was discontinued in 1963.  The community was named for Henry Nowlan, of the U.S. Army (a recording error accounts for the error in spelling, which was never corrected).

I’ve run into these perpetuated spelling errors before!

Here’s the town (no Street View coverage available):

The OD told me he could get to a spot on Route 14 and see the road that heads south to Newlin.  I told him to go for it:

I really like the tree and abandoned building. Too bad about the power pole . . .

Moving on to Midland.  A 1908 atlas of South Dakota place names says this:

Of course, I had to check out the veracity of the claim:

Close enough. And it’s actually a cool reason to name the town Midland. It’s time for one of my name origin stories:

In the height of the Black Hills gold rush (1876 – 1877) thousands of easterners were headed west to seek their fortune. The railroads weren’t completed, so many of the would-be miners were traveling on foot, horseback and in wagons. They would be acutely aware of river crossings, and a gentleman by the name of Jake Johnson operated an establishment along the Bad River Road with lodging, food and supplies. He was aware that the little town that grew up around his place was about halfway between the two rivers.

He thought, “Let’s call it MIdway.” When it came time for a post office (1890), the town fathers were notified by the US Government that there already was a Midway in the newly-formed (1889) state of South Dakota. So, they settled on MIdland . . .

I’ll close with this shot of the Badlands, posted on GE by Brian B:

That’ll do it . . .

KS

Greg

© 2022 A Landing A Day

Missoula, Montana (Revisited)

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 2567; A Landing A Day blog post number 1012

Dan:  Today’s lat/long (N46^o 47.283’, W113^o 58.730) puts me in west central Montana:

My local landing map:

My watershed analysis lets us know that I landed in the watershed of Miller Creek:

From Miller Creek, on to the Bitterroot River (5^th hit, making the Bitterroot the 179^th river on my list of rivers with 5 or more hits); on to the Clark Fork (27^th hit). Although not shown, of course the Clark Fork more-or-less becomes the Pend Oreille (29^th hit); on to the mighty Columbia (190^th hit).

As is my wont, I went over to Google Earth to check out my watershed in more detail, as well as to get a look at my landing.  Wow.  In doing so, I really opened up a can of worms.  Here’s the story:

Right off, I noticed that Google Earth (GE) identified a “Dagret Creek”:

This didn’t make great sense, as there appeared to be no creek in the vicinity.  I decided that the label must be misplaced, but I saw that I did in fact land in a fairly substantial mountain-side watershed, but very strangely, without an accompanying creek (or drainage ditch, or gulley, or any indication of moving water).

And then (after Googling “Dagret Creek”), I found a USGS map, which, much to my surprise, actually labeled Dagret Creek. It looks like I landed in a tributary valley to Dagret Creek:

Using the topographic contours, I outlined the watershed boundaries:

I then used an oblique GE shot to get a look at the watershed:

And I sketched in the watershed boundary:

 I sent the Orange Dude to get a look:

Right off, he had to get a look at my landing:

Back to the no-creek conundrum: Frustratingly, he was limited to the paved portion of the road, which ends just past the driveway, but he positioned himself to look across the mouth of the valley:

Hmmm.  No apparent creek.  Here’s a close-up GE shot of the mouth of the valley; once again, no creek.

This is getting stranger.  The watershed is about a mile across up at the top of the ridge, and a little more than a mile from the road to the ridge.  That’s a decent sized watershed!  Let’s say it’s a triangle with those dimensions; the area would be a half square mile, or about 22,000 acres.  Then, just for the heck of it, we’ll imagine that over the period of 4 hours, 2” of rain falls on the watershed.  How much water is that?

That’s 2.3 million cubic feet of water, or 17.4 million gallons.  Let’s say half soaks in and let’s give the watershed 12 hours to drain all the rest.   Dividing by 2 and then 12, we get about 725,000  gallons per hour of runoff.  Diving by 60, we get 12,000 gallons per minute.  I repeat!  Where’s the stream?!?!  At least a gulley!

My only thought is that instead of 50% soaking in, it seems like 100% must soak in!  But this is a mountain, not a pile of gravel!  So here’s my theory:  During a storm, there actually is surficial stream flow coming down the mountain (i.e., Dagret Creek, I guess). 

But lower down, the mountain bedrock is covered by a thick and highly permeable gravel formation, which would be like trying to get a stream to flow over a thick bed of marbles – it’ll just percolate down.

Anyway, I went to the Missoula County Soil Survey map to get a closer look.  Here ‘tis:

My landing is near the “r” in “Miller” (along Miller Creek, of course).  Although it’s not obvious, the word “Miller” is in the soils unit labeled “43.”  Up on the mountain – to the north – is unit 647. 

Unit 647 is basically mountain bedrock, with maybe some thin soil here and there.  Unit 43 is in fact a gravel unit, described as a “gravelly loam,” which means the soil is dominated by gravel, but has some sand, silt and clay as well. 

The OD snapped this shot for us:

I’m sure the barren hill in the foreground is all gravel – which is maybe why nothing much grows on it.  The gravel must extend some distance up the Dagret Valley, including the valley floor.

Your honor, I rest my case.  

As a geologist, I wondered where the gravel came from.  I’ll get to that in a bit.  But first (as my long-time loyal readers surely know), I must talk about Glacial Lake Missoula.  Like Browns Valley, Minnesota – where one finds the incredibly subtle continental drainage divide between the Hudson Bay watershed & the Mississippi River watershed – Glacial Lake Missoula is one of my favorite topics. 

From my May 2017 post (Rufus and Biggs Junction, Oregon and Maryhill, Washington):

I’m going to move right along to my favorite recurring geologic story:  the glacial lake Missoula flood.  This has been discussed at length in the following posts:

• Missoula, Montana (March 2013)
• Othello, Hanford and the Channeled Scablands, Washington (May 2016)
• Davenport, Washington (May 2013)

Back to now, and guess what?  I’m going to discuss it at length once again! 

For those of you who don’t know anything about the glacial lake Missoula flood, here’s the story in a nutshell:

About 20,000 years ago, continental ice sheets covered about the northern quarter of the lower 48.  It started warming, and the glaciers began to melt.  Near Missoula, glacial melt water began to flood into the Bitterroot valley.  But the outlet was to the north, still blocked by ice, so the water had no where to go.  The greater Missoula area (consisting of the valleys of the Bitterroot and lark Fork rivers) began to fill up with water, eventually forming a huge lake, with as much water as Lakes Erie & Ontario combined.  Here’s a map:

Because the dam was made of ice, it melted/floated to the point where there was a catastrophic, nearly instantaneous release of all of the lake water.  This unleashed a flood of unimaginable proportions, which flowed to the Columbia Valley, taking the route shown on the above map. 

It turns out that the ice advanced again, the lake formed again, the dam failed again, and the flood of unimaginable proportions happened again.  And again, and again and again, maybe more than 20 times.  Oh my.

There are stories galore about the evidence left behind of the Lake and the geological chaos along the flood’s route; as well as about the geologists who uncovered the evidence, and put it all together so the truth would be known.

If you’re interested, check out my earlier posts or just Google Glacial Lake Missoula Floods, and off you go.

So what’s new for this post?  Well, I found a couple of videos that are definitely worth watching.  This first one is a very cool (silent) animation of a flood map.

(My friend Bill is part of the ALAD nation.  He mostly reads my posts on his lunch hour at his office, but he feels he has to skip any videos with sound, for fear of bothering his co-workers.  So Bill – if you’re reading this while at the office, you can watch this silent video without bothering anybody.)

This next one has sound (sorry about that Bill), but it could be viewed with the sound off.  It’s a computer animation of the flood going over the “Dry Falls” in Washington State:

So what about the gravel?  First, I need to check out he highest Missoula Lake level, to see if my landing spot (and the Miller Creek Valley) were under water.  The internet let me know that the maximum lake level was about elevation 4200. So of course, I painstakingly tracked the 4200 contour around my landing using the GE elevation tool.  Here’s what I found:

So my landing (and the Miller Creek Valley) were all under water.  The elevation of the road along Miller Creek is about 3700.  That makes the lake about 500’ deep!  By the way, the elevation of downtown Missoula is about 3200, making the lake about 1000’ deep there . . .

Getting back to the gravel deposit:   One might think that silt and clay get deposited under lake water.  And that’s generally true, but along with the fine-grained materials, plenty of gravel also got deposited, carried by the high-velocity glacial meltwater that filled the lake.

(And, as all of you amateur glacial geologists know, the continental ice sheet was loaded with sand, silt clay, gravel and rocks scraped up off the land as the glaciers moved south.  So when the glaciers melted, all of that stuff gets carried away by the meltwater and deposited wherever the water slows down, like when it enters a lake.)

When the ice dam failed, the water rushed out of the lake with enough velocity to scour the finer-grained sediment off the bottom of the lake, leaving behind the big stuff – i.e, gravel.  When the lake filled again, more gravel, sand, etc. would be deposited by the meltwater filling the lake, and the fine-grained stuff would be removed when the ice dam failed.

Lather.  Rinse.  Repeat.  At the end, there’s a lot of gravel in them thar hills.

I’ll close with this lovely shot posted on GE by Pavlina Borosova, about 10 miles south of my landing on the Bitterroot River:

I just noticed that this post is 100% blue – I didn’t copy and paste a single word!

That’ll do it . . .

KS

Greg

© 2022 A Landing A Day

A Bunch of Tiny Towns Near Trinidad, Colorado

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 2566; A Landing A Day blog post number 1011

Dan:  Today’s lat/long (N37^o 9.244’, W104^o 49.510) puts me in south central Colorado:

So Dan! Denver’s not all that far away. Maybe a Saturday trip to my landing spot? Put Weston into your GPS . . .

My local landing map:

My streams-only map:

As you can see, I landed in the watershed of the Purgatoire River (4^th hit); on to the Arkansas (145^th hit); to the Mighty Mississipp (996^th hit).  The countdown to 1000 continues!

Of course, I took a closer look at my watershed with Google Earth (GE):

So, I landed in the watershed of an unnamed tributary, eh?  Well, it turns out that’s not correct.  After preparing the above GE graphic, I found this USGS topo map:

Correction:  I landed in the watershed of Molino Canyon! 

Particularly noteworthy on the USGS map is the fact that the Purgatoire River runs through the Picketwire Valley.  Hmmm.  Nearly always, the name of the valley and the name of the river that created the valley coincide.  So what’s up with Picketwire?

I happened on an article about dinosaur tracks found along the Purgatoire River by Jeff Mitton for the Colorado Arts and Sciences Magazine of the University of Colorado at Boulder.  In the article he says this:

It is a curious story how the Purgatoire River came to flow through Picketwire Canyon. A large band of conquistadors searching for gold was exploring the area and decided to split into two bands to more efficiently search separate canyons. The sole priest had the good fortune to be in the band that survived, while Native Americans wiped out the other band. Because the soldiers died without receiving last rites from the priest, their souls were lost for eternity in Purgatory.

The river was given a Spanish name meaning “souls lost in Purgatory.” Later, French fur trappers translated the Spanish name to French and then they shortened it to Purgatoire. European settlers had difficulty pronouncing Purgatoire, so they simplified it to Picketwire, which is now the most common name used by local residents. So today both the river and its canyon have two names: Purgatoire and Picketwire.

You must say “Purgatoire” real fast with a hillbilly/cowboy twang to get a feel for “Picketwire.”

And there are about 1,500 dino tracks here, and some are really great:

Full disclosure:  these tracks are about 70 miles northeast of my landing.

Getting back to GE, the Orange Dude was able to find a bridge over the Picketwire near my landing:

Here’s his very scenic downstream view:

Doing a 180, he could look off in the direction of my landing:

A bunch of the little towns near my landing – Segundo, Valdez, Cokedale, Primero, Boncarbo and Ludlow (but not Weston) were founded as coal mining towns in the early 1900s.  Trinidad – a much larger town – was not founded as a coal mining town, but was a center for the early 1900s coal mine boom in southern Colorado. 

In 1910, there was a horrendous coal mine explosion in Primero (very close to my landing – scroll back up to check out my local landing map).  From Wiki:

The mining community of Primero was one of the first in the region, hence the name.  At its peak, the mine employed 275 workers and the town contained 175 total buildings, including one Catholic and one Protestant church, a high school, a community center and other amenities.

An explosion at the Primero mine killed 75 miners on 31 January 1910.  The mine explosion has been cited as a relevant example of the unsafe conditions prevalent in Colorado Fuel & Iron mines in the years prior to the 1913-1914 Strike. 

More about the labor strife in a bit.

Today, there’s not even a ghost town.  Here’s a GE shot from where the town was:

And, I found some back-in-the-day shots of Primero:

Here’s the miner’s bath house:

And the miner’s club house & community center:

Primero was quite the town – but it has disappeared without a trace . . .

This is from the Wiki entry on Trinidad:

Colorado Fuel & Iron, under the guidance of first John D. Rockefeller and then his son John D. Rockefeller, Jr., greatly expanded its operations in the southern Colorado coalfields in the decade following their 1903 investment in the company.

Trinidad became the a focal point of the 1913-1914 United Mine Workers of America strike against the Rockefeller-owned Colorado Fuel & Iron company, which has come to be known as the Colorado Coalfield War. On April 20, 1914, just 18 miles north of town, the events of the Ludlow Massacre occurred.

You can see Ludlow on my local landing map. The Ludlow Massacre has a Wiki entry:

The Ludlow Massacre was a mass killing perpetrated by anti-striker militia during the Colorado Coalfield War. Soldiers from the Colorado National Guard and private guards employed by Colorado Fuel and Iron Company (CF&I) attacked a tent colony of roughly 1,200 striking coal miners and their families in Ludlow, Colorado, on April 20, 1914.

Approximately 21 people – including 2 women and 12 children (aged between 3 months and 11 years) – were killed. John D. Rockefeller Jr., a part-owner of CF&I who had recently appeared before a United States congressional hearing on the strikes, was widely blamed for having orchestrated the massacre.

Here’s the scene after the attack:

Ludlow was the deadliest single incident during the Colorado Coalfield War and spurred a ten-day period of heightened violence throughout Colorado (often called the Ten-Day War). In retaliation for the massacre at Ludlow, bands of armed miners attacked dozens of anti-union establishments, destroying property and engaging in several skirmishes with the Colorado National Guard.  An estimated 69 to 199 people were killed during the strike. Historian Thomas G. Andrews has called it the “deadliest strike in the history of the United States.”

The Ludlow Massacre was a watershed moment in American labor relations. Socialist historian Howard Zinn described it as “the culminating act of perhaps the most violent struggle between corporate power and laboring men in American history”. 

Congress responded to public outrage by directing the House Committee on Mines and Mining to investigate the events.  Its report, published in 1915, was influential in promoting child labor laws and an eight-hour work day.

We didn’t learn about this in my high school American history class . . .

I found two lovely photos posted on GE near my landing. First this, taken 10 miles north of my landing by Virgil Hammock (great name!):

And I’ll close with this one by Charles Baxter, taken on the road west of Weston, looking west (clever how I got three “wests” in the span of five words):

That’ll do it . . .

KS

Greg

© 2022 A Landing A Day