Camassia offers a rare view of the natural history of the
Willamette Valley and what the floods did to carve out the
Willamaette Valley as we know it now. This beautiful area that has
so many natural earth sites. With erratic rocks to rare large
amount of flowers and animals going back thousands of years. At
ground zero at Camassia was once covered by more than 100 feet of
water. During the end of the last iceage between 12,800 and 15,000
years ago a continental ice sheet damned the Clark River near the
Idaho - Montana border creating a vast lake. Periodically, the lake
broke through the ice dam resulting in the colossal Bretz Floods.
During the floods, more water coursed down the Columbia River than
is found in all the rivers of the world today. The water backed up
into the Willamette Valley flooding it to a depth of 400 feet. The
force of these floods scoured the more resistent bedrock at
Camassia creating it's shallow soiled plateaus, and carved away
softer bedrock creating low areas that are now seasonal ponds.
Icebergs carried by the flood waters brought the Erratics. When the
ice melted, the erratics sank to the lake bottom. One erratic
deposited near Camassia can be seen in the quarry. Camassia is
named for the common camas which blooms purple fields every spring.
Please stay on the marked trails and like the signs there say leave
no trace. All information can be gotten at the restoration site at
the begining. Please watch out for poison oak. Please answer these
four questions to get credit for this cache.
1. What type of rock is at number 8 site?
2. How many numbered sites are on the trail?
3. What man in 1962 encouraged the purchase of this area?
4. What kind of rock are the erratics made of?
Happy Caching!