Cataclysms on the Columbia tells two stories. One follows geological
research that challenged the scientific paradigm of the early 20th
century, and the other chronicles the result of that research: the
discovery of powerful prehistoric floods that shaped the Pacific
Northwest. The cataclysms at the end of the last Ice Age left a scabland
of buttes, dry falls, and rocky gorges, but it took the detective work
of geologist J Harlen Bretz to prove it to the world. His lifetime of
research and unshakeable belief changed geology forever.