Big Skies, Silos, and Farms - Eastern Washington 2026 (Part 1)

Eastern Washington is topographically and climatologically so different than the Puget Lowlands of western Washington. It is so much fun to head east of the Cascades and explore farm roads and byways. In June 2026, a friend and I took a road trip to look at the Channeled Scablands, the geological remains of the immense floods from glacial Lake Missoula. But here, we will look at farms and cultural features. 

We started our trip in Hood River, Oregon, and proceeded east along the south bank of the Columbia River. This was the route that my dad took in 1949 when he stopped at the famous Celilo Falls. We drove through the Wallula Gap and emerged in eastern Washington. 

Umatilla

 

The cowboy of 6th Street

A giant cowboy! Did we drive to west Texas? No, just an enthusiastic advertisement for Harvest Foods. Chicken drumsticks only $1/lb. 

 

Lamar 

 

Lamar is a farming community on the Touchet River. This is wheat-growing country, so there are silos to store the produce. 

  

Palouse Falls State Park

 

Palouse Falls is in one of the coulees gouged out to the basalt by the great floods. The Palouse Falls State Park Heritage Site is on Palouse Falls Road in LaCrosse. It is a drive but really worthwhile. You need a Washington State Discover Pass for entry. We saw marmots everywhere, quite tame. But that means tourists feed them. Don't do that!

2025 view SW of the Palouse River

(Portra 160 film, Pentax MG, 50mm ƒ/2 Rikenon lens)

Washtucna

Forgotten farmhouse, Rte 261 north of Washtucna

Washtucna is pretty quiet. I stopped in town during my 2025 road trip. For this 2026 trip, we continued north. I want to return to this area with B&W film, maybe with a 4×5" camera.

 

Ritzville

 

Ritzville is in the heart of wheat farm country. I remember when a college roomate and I stayed with his family in Ritzville in the early 1970s. US farmers had just begun to sell wheat to the Soviet Union, and Washington farmers were happy and buying new combines and other farm machinery. These wheat sales were an admission by the Soviet regime that they were unable to feed their own people. The sales started trade in other commodities with the Soviet Union. They were an element of Richard Nixon's program of détente during the height of the cold war.

 

North Division Street

North Division Street

The Top Hat, 210 East 1st Avenue

No more food here, 509 West 1st Avenue

I am really enjoying eastern Washington. It reminds me of my road trips through west Texas or other farm areas in the Southwest. The big sky dominates the scene, and lonely houses or silos pop up as you round a bend in a road. The people you meet are friendly, but it is a lonely terrain.

I took these photographs on Kodak Gold 200 film with a Rolleiflex 3.5E twin lens reflex camera. It has a 75mm ƒ/3.5 Xenotar lens (5 element version). Glazer's Camera in Seattle developed the film and scanned the negatives with a Noritsu system. 

 

2025 E. Washington Road Trip 03 - Palouse Falls and Washtucna

 

Palouse Falls State Park Heritage Site

Palouse Falls is a geologic wonder in east central Washington. The rock here is part of the Columbia River Basalt Group, which covers over 81,000 square miles of the earth's surface in eastern Oregon, eastern Washington, western Idaho, and part of northern Nevada. Most of the basalt erupted between 14 and 17 million years ago, or the middle-late Miocene epoch. We do not need to delve deeper into the volcanic history of the region, but consider that you see these remarkable basalt outcrops in many parts of the state east of the Cascades. 

Map of the Columbia River Basalt Group, from the Volcano Hazards Program, US Geological Survey

The spectacular canyon and the waterfall at the state park are a result of immense floods that burst from Glacial Lake Missoula. Near the end of the last continental glacial era, about 15,000 years ago, a lobe of ice blocked the drainage of what is now the Clark Fork River. The water that backed up created Glacial Lake Missoula, a major body of water that may have included as much volume as the combined present Lakes Erie and Ontario. As the water level rose, pressure against the ice dam increased and caused the ice to float. The dam failed and a mass of water rushed westwards (see the figure below). Peak flow may have been as high as 386 million cubic feet per second (cfs). As a comparison, the flow of the Mississippi River at Old River Control during the record 2011 flood was 2 million cfs.

Floodwaters rushed across east central Washington towards the Columbia River valley and on to the Pacific. The waters carved an immense network of channels, canyons, and valleys, creating what we now call the Channeled Scablands. These included Grand Coulee, where the dam is now located, Dry Falls, and Palouse Falls. Flood waters even reached south deep into the Willamette Valley of Oregon, where they deposited masses of sediment. Geologists now estimated that there were at least 40 of these pulses of water that occurred over a period of about 2,500 years.

Consider the time scale. The earth is about 4.5 to 5 billion years old. The Missoula Floods occurred about 15,000 years ago, only a is a tiny fraction of earth's history. Humans may have come to North America during the last glacial maximum between 21,000 and 23,000 years ago (based on footprints found at White sands National Park). Therefore, predecessors of our present native Americans saw these floods. 

The Washington Department of Natural Resources has an excellent interactive presentation of Washington's Ice Age floods. 

Areas affected by floods (teal color), from the

 Montana Natural History Center, Glacial Lake Missoula Chapter.

 Note the ice lobe that extended south into the Puget Lowlands.

Palouse Falls from the visitor's center (Samsung phone digital file)

These amazing columns of basalt show lava flows of different ages. When the basalt cools quickly, it forms hexagonal columnar formations. Devil's Tower in Wyoming (where the UFOs land) and the Giant's Causeway in Northern Ireland are other well-known examples. A Wikipedia article lists other examples around the world.

View southwest (downstream) of the Palouse River.
The terraces outline successive basalt flows. (50mm ƒ/2 Rikenon lens)

Do visit Palouse Falls State Park Heritage Site. It is an impressive example of geology and the amazing effects of flowing water. 

Washtucna

Washtucna is a small town in Adams County about 17 miles north of Palouse Falls and about a hour from Spokane, Walla-Walla, and Pullman. The town is at the head of the Washtucna Coulee (again, one of the remnants of the Missoula Floods) and is therefore lower than some of the surrounding terrain. 

The town looked like it had gone through a rough time economically. I saw some interesting subject material along Main Street (Route 261).

El Camino (28mm ƒ/2.8 Vivitar lens)

I took most of these photographs on Kodak Portra 160 film with my Pentax MG camera and Pentax, Vivitar, and Rikenon lenses. Northeast Photographic in Bath, Maine developed the film. I scanned it with a Nikon Coolscan 5000 scanner.

References

Camp, V.E., Reidel, S.P., Ross, M.E., Brown, R.J., and Self, S., 2017. Field-trip guide to the vents, dikes, stratigraphy, and structure of the Columbia River Basalt Group, eastern Oregon and southeastern Washington, Scientific Investigations Report 2017-5022-N, U.S. Geological Survey, https://doi.org/10.3133/sir20175022N

Waltham, T., 2010. Lake Missoula and the Scablands, Washington, USA. Geology Today, pp 152-159DOI: 10.1111/j.1365-2451.2010.00763.x