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his outrageous hypothesis. Second, and just prior to the paper sub-
mission to the Journal of Geology, he was named to the editorial
board of that journal.
Although the “Spokane Flood Debate” would rage on for sev-
eral decades, Bretz largely abandoned the scabland scene after
his decade of intensive fieldwork. He trusted that a resolution of
the controversy would eventually be found when others devoted
appropriate field investigations to the problem. Beginning in
1933, Bretz initiated new lines of research, beginning with gla-
cial studies as a member of the Louise A. Boyd Expedition to
East Greenland. From 1938 to 1961, Bretz devoted considerable
research to the origin of limestone caverns. His cave studies in
17 states, Mexico, and Bermuda placed physical speleology on a
firm scientific basis, and his insights and energy were important
to the late twentieth-century resurgence of karst geomorphic and
Bretz (on left) with University of Chicago geology graduate students stand- hydrologic studies in the United States.
ing in front of a Model T that was provided by Thomas Lodge for the field Resolution of the Channeled Scabland controversy came gradu-
seasons of 1923 and 1924. (Photograph provided by Lodge’s grandson,
Brian McDonald.) ally, initially with the documentation by Joseph Thomas Pardee
(1871–1960) of ice-dammed Pleistocene glacial Lake Missoula in
assemblage of landforms that included coulees, immense dry cata- western Montana as a plausible source for the scabland mega-
racts, rock basins, anastomosing channel ways, and gravel bars. flooding. Eventually the accumulating field evidence became
Field relations among these features, most notably the multiple overwhelming, particularly when Bretz and others synthesized
levels of divide crossings, led Bretz to propose that an immense new data obtained by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation’s Columbia
cataclysmic flood had swept across the Columbia Plateau in late Basin Irrigation Project in the 1950s. Especially important for
Pleistocene time, creating the great plexus of channel ways that he convincing skeptics was the discovery that giant current ripples
named the “Channeled Scabland.” (gravel dunes) cap many of the scabland gravel mounds that Bretz
In a 1923 paper, Bretz concluded, “It was a debacle which swept had noted in the 1920s to be immense river bars. By the late 1960s
the Columbia Plateau.” He named this debacle the “Spokane and early 1970s, as the field evidence mounted and as advances
Flood,” thereby initiating the famous controversy. As he well were made in understanding the physical processes of high-energy
knew, the notion of catastrophic flooding directly challenged sub- megaflooding, Bretz’s bold hypothesis came to be generally
stantive and epistemological notions of uniformitarianism that accepted by the geological community.
were thought to underpin geology as a science. These uniformitar- At age 97, in recognition for more than 70 years of scientific
ian principles held that cataclysmic processes were unsuitable top- achievements, J Harlen Bretz was honored with the 1979 Penrose
ics for proper scientific investigation. To counter this presumption, Medal of The Geological Society of America. In accepting, Bretz
Bretz conducted extensive field investigations each summer, the listed his major research accomplishment as follows: “Perhaps I
results of which he meticulously detailed in more than a dozen can be credited with reviving and demystifying legendary cata-
major papers from 1923 to 1932. strophism and challenging a too rigorous uniformitarianism.”
How was it that this outrageous hypothesis got published? In
today’s culture of “publish or perish,” outrageous hypotheses tend FURTHER READING
to get soundly squelched within the secret rituals of peer review. Baker, V.R., 2008, The Spokane Flood debates: Historical background and
Today’s younger scientists, wary of their h-index rankings, can be philosophical perspective, in Grapes, R., Oldroyd, D., and Grigelis, A., eds.,
reluctant to expend effort on topics that deviate from currently History of Geomorphology and Quaternary Geology: Geological Society,
London, Special Publication 301, p. 33–50.
fashionable paths of inquiry. But Bretz had some advantages in Soennichsen, J., 2008, Bretz’s flood: The remarkable story of a rebel geologist
this regard. First, he became tenured shortly before he formulated and the world’s greatest flood: Seattle, Washington, Sasquatch Books, 289 p.

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