Horse Heaven Hills

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Horse Heaven Hills
The Horse Heaven Hills along the Columbia River at Wallula Gap; noteworthy are the dark areas of basalts exposed by erosion.

The Horse Heaven Hills along the Columbia River at Wallula Gap ; noteworthy are the dark areas of basalts exposed by erosion.

Highest peak Bickleton Ridge ( 1319  m )
location Klickitat County / Yakima County / Benton County , Washington , USA
Coordinates 46 ° 8 ′  N , 119 ° 52 ′  W Coordinates: 46 ° 8 ′  N , 119 ° 52 ′  W
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The Horse Heaven Hills are a long chain of tall, undulating hills in Counties Klickitat , Yakima, and Benton in Washington State . The hills are the visible expression of an anticline in the Yakima Fold Belt created by the north-south compression of lava flows of the Columbia River Basalt Group . The highest point is the Bickleton Ridge in the west of the chain. The Horse Heaven Hills are in the rain shadow of the cascade chain on the east side, which makes them significantly drier and hotter than regions on the west side of the cascades.

The region has been inhabited for centuries by Indians who camped around the Horse Heaven Hills. They used the chain both as a hunting ground and as a border between different tribes. The Lewis and Clark Expedition brought the first known Europeans to the area. It was followed by settlement by European immigrants who introduced modern agricultural techniques. Today viticulture has become an important economic branch, which in 2005 established the Horse Heaven Hills AVA wine-growing region .

The north-south compression of basalt rivers ejected millions of years ago is responsible for the uplift that created the hills. They were also eroded by the Missoula floods towards the end of the last ice age . The floods brought icebergs with boulders in them that were deposited outside the basalts that dominate the Columbia Basin .

In the vegetation, native grasses and shrubs dominate the range of hills, which is largely treeless. The flora also includes native flowering plants, some of which are considered endangered. There were once large game populations in the hills, but hunting has wiped out several species. Herds of horses also once crossed the hills, but were displaced by the farms. Today wild horses are only found near the Satus Pass . There have been several attempts to reintroduce animal species that were once native to the hills.

geography

Looking east on Interstate 82 as it meets the main ridge of the Horse Heaven Hills

The Horse Heaven Hills run eastward from the Simcoe Mountains to Wallula Gap . The range of hills is bounded to the west by Satus Creek near Bickleton, to the east and south by the Columbia River and to the north by an anticline chain roughly following the Yakima River . The Simcoe Mountains run west from the Horse Heaven Hills to the Cascade Range .

The northern slopes of the hills are particularly steep, while the southern slope is relatively gentle. They form the southern end of the Yakima River Valley . The highest point is the Bickleton Ridge, which reaches 4,327 ft (1,319 m) altitude near the small town of Bickleton in the southwest of the chain.

The area is sparsely populated, with only a handful of unincorporated areas like Bickleton and Horse Heaven . In the neighborhood of the north side of the hills there are much larger communities like the Tri-Cities and Prosser .

Numerous country roads cross the range of hills. It is also crossed by Interstate 82 (here also US Route 395), which connects Kennewick with Plymouth , and Washington State Route 221, which connects Prosser with Paterson. Washington State Route 397 runs through the foothills of the chain and connects I-82 with Finley , passing Jump Off Joe on the north side. Before the construction of I-82, Washington State Route 14 crossed the Horse Heaven Hills, but this connection to Plymouth was cut with the construction of the interstate along the same route.

Some temporary streams have their source in the Horse Heaven Hills, including Amon Creek . The northern slopes of the range of hills drain to the Yakima River, a tributary of the Columbia. The rest of the hills drain directly to the Columbia River itself.

climate

A dust storm over the Horse Heaven Hills and the Columbia Basin.

The Horse Heaven Hills are located in one of the hottest regions of Washington with the same semi-arid climate as the Tri-Cities and Hermiston . Across the entire chain of hills, according to the Köppen and Geiger climate classification , the climate in the west can be described as warm summer Mediterranean and in the east as cold semi-arid, with only small areas that are more likely to be classified as hot summer Mediterranean.

Rainfall is low, ranging from 9 in (229 mm) in the lower elevations of the chain to nearly 20 in (508 mm) per year in the higher elevations in the west. This is due to the location of the hills east of the Cascades. The cascade chain creates a rain shadow that makes almost all of eastern Washington and Oregon a semi-arid area, which is much drier than the areas west of the main cascade ridge. Most of the precipitation falls in winter, while the dry season occurs in summer.

The area is one of the driest wheat growing areas in the world. Strong winds cause severe soil erosion on agricultural land; the dust drifts violated federal air quality standards up to twenty times in a ten-year period. These events can bring visibility down to near zero and force highways in the hills to close. In winter, there is more snow in the Horse Heaven Hills than in the surrounding valleys. The snowmelt can lead to further severe erosion events.

The Horse Heaven Hills are a source of air pollution for the Tri-Cities. On hot, calm days in summer, it is believed that air flows from the north through the Tri-Cities and is deposited at the foot of the hills. This is possibly the source of elevated ozone levels in the area comparable to Seattle and close to federal limits. High ozone levels are also measured in Hermiston, although they do not reach the level of those from the Tri-Cities.

history

The Horse Heaven Hills and the surrounding areas were inhabited long before European colonization, with the population density in the hills themselves remaining quite low compared to the surrounding valleys. The range of hills served as an important boundary between the various indigenous peoples.

These peoples first came into contact with Europeans during the Lewis and Clark expedition. In the two centuries that followed the expedition, human use of the Horse Heaven Hills changed from predominantly hunting and grazing grounds to modern agriculture, which characterizes the region today, and to the larger settlements on the periphery.

Prehistory and exploration

A map of the Lewis and Clark Expedition shows the Horse Heaven Hills near the confluence of the Columbia and Snake Rivers.

Before Europeans settled the Horse Heaven Hills and took them into agricultural use, the area was occupied by indigenous peoples for centuries. The hills lay in the territory of the Umatilla and formed the southern boundary of the territory of the Yakama . The Walla Walla people occupied the far northeast in the Finley and Jump Off Joe area. All of these tribes spoke Sahaptian languages and formed communities of hunters and gatherers . By the Walla Walla Council these peoples were expelled from their ancestral territories in 1855. The Walla Walla and Umatilla peoples now live in the Umatilla Indian Reservation near Pendleton (Oregon) , while the Yakama now live in the Yakima Indian Reservation south of Yakima (Washington) .

The Lewis and Clark expedition followed the Snake River downstream in the fall of 1805 to what is now Sacajawea State Park near Pasco . The Horse Heaven Hills were noted in their diary entry of October 16, 1805 as "a chain of high lands, running from SW to NE and on the opposite side, two miles from Columbia". In the days that followed, the expedition continued down the Columbia, circling the Horse Heaven Hills, crossing the Wallula Gap.

colonization

A cabin near Bickleton

The first covered wagon trains reached the nearby Yakima Valley in 1853. The local indigenous people welcomed the settlers in a friendly manner, but the two groups of settlers could not achieve their goals because the entirety of east Washington (including the Horse Heaven Hills) was closed to them. The ban was lifted after a series of riots and battles. The early hill plots for settlement were 160 acres (65 hectares); by 1910 all the parcels were claimed.

James Gordon Kinney, one of the early pioneers , is given the name of the Horse Heaven Hills from 1881. He first came to the region in 1857. Impressed by the knee-high grass that fed the large herds of wild horses that populated the hills, he remarked: "The area offers excellent forage and a comparatively isolated location ... This is sure to be horse heaven!"

The farmers began in the hills above Prosser wheat in dry land to plant after there in 1887 a mill was built. A few small towns were founded in the late 19th / early 20th centuries, including Bickleton and Horse Heaven. Bickleton was initially established as a trading post, and the rest of the city developed around the area. Horse Heaven only had a post office for about 30 years whereas the one at Bickleton still operates today.

geology

Millions of years ago, lava poured from a system of fissures in Oregon and Idaho , creating what is now known as the Columbia River Basalt Group . There were more than 300 individual effusions with an average volume of 500 ... 600 cubic kilometers. This series of eruptions was independent of the volcanism occurring in the nearby cascade range. The river basalts finally reached a thickness of about 1.8 kilometers. The weight of the basalts freshly brought to the surface caused the earth's crust below to subside. The north-south facing compression of the basalts created the Horse Heaven Hills by causing a slow uplift about 15 million years ago. The compression has a rate of about one millimeter per year.

Graphic with the topographic maps of Washington and Northern Oregon, the areas reached by the Missoula Floods are marked
Location of prehistoric Lake Lewis.

Towards the end of the last Ice Age , a tongue of the Cordillera Ice Sheet dammed the Clark Fork River near Missoula, Montana, and formed a large lake, Lake Missoula . Between 15,000 and 13,000 years ago the dam broke under the pressure of the lake water and released all water towards the Pacific about every 55 years . The discharge of these Missoula floods was about 10 km³ per hour, which corresponds to about thirteen times that of the Amazon .

The Horse Heaven Hills served as a dam for this water, which dammed up in the Columbia Basin and formed Lake Lewis . The surface of Lake Lewis reached a maximum elevation of 1,200 ft (366 m) above sea level before all of the water drained through the Wallula Gap, which limited the outflow to a fifth of the total per day. The lake extended to Yakima and Moses Lake . The flood deposited boulders on the low slopes of the hills. These boulders are made of granite, which was transported from Alberta through the ice sheet and was released from the ice blocks in which they were contained when they melted. After passing the Wallula Gap, the water at the entrance to the Columbia River Gorge was dammed again and formed Lake Condon on the south side of the Horse Heaven Hills.

The soils found in the Horse Heaven Hills were influenced by the Missoula Floods, but also contain loess and ash from the eruptions of the Cascade Volcanoes to the west. The soils are poor in nutrients and well drained. There are small, deep canyons on the slopes of the range of hills.

use

Although sparsely populated, the Horse Heaven Hills in Washington State became an important agricultural and energy producing region. Irrigation has transformed some of the originally semi-arid areas into a region where a wide variety of agricultural crops thrive. The largest irrigated areas are on the south side of the Horse Heaven Hills.

Thousands of acres in Horse Heaven Hills are owned by government agencies. Most of the land is controlled by the Washington State Department of Natural Resources. The Bureau of Land Management has significant land holdings south of Benton City , and various community owners have smaller lots scattered across the hills.

Agriculture

Farmland in the Horse Heaven Hills

Irrigation from the Yakima and Columbia Rivers has recently made parts of the Horse Heaven Hills an important agricultural region. Wheat is grown dry where there is no irrigation. The irrigation network is constantly being expanded. One example of this is the project that has allowed an additional 4,000 acres (1,619 ha) to be irrigated since 2016. Projects like this meet resistance from farmers who lease the land they farm because they are being displaced by farmers who grow other crops.

A wide variety of crops can be grown where water is available for irrigation, including potatoes, onions and carrots. It also offers opportunities for fruit and wine growing.

There are numerous wineries in the hills, some of which produce a few of the most popular brands in Washington. The Horse Heaven Hills AVA , an American wine region , was founded in 2005 to promote the wine industry in the region. Chateau Ste. Michelle is the largest single winery in Washington in the small town of Paterson.

Energy generation

Much of the range of hills has fabulous wind conditions for power generation. For this reason, the Horse Heaven Hills offer space for several wind farms that generate electrical energy for the Eregion. The Nine Mile Canyon Project south of Kennewick and Finley occupies 75 acres (30 hectares) and can generate up to 95.9 megawatts. The project was implemented in three phases between 2002 and 2007. It is integrated into the Bonneville Power Administration supply system.

The Juniper Canyon Wind Project near Bickleton began in 2010 with the first of two phases. The first expansion should be able to generate up to 150 megawatts, in the second phase capacities for up to 100 megawatts will be built up again. It is also integrated into the Bonneville Power Administration System via a newly built 20.4 mi (32.8 km) transmission line.

nature

Indigenous grasses in the Horse Heaven Hills south of Benton City

The vegetation of the Horse Heaven Hills is dominated by grasses, shrubs and small flowering plants. Sagittarius is native and widespread in the region. Some of the flowers of the area are different at high risk, including Erigeron compactus a fleabane -Art which is considered endangered. Due to the displacement of many pasturelanders who used to live here, some invasive plants have found a home in the Horse Heaven Hills.

After the introduction of horses, they were used by the natives for hunting and the local game stocks, including bison, pronghorn and elk, were exhausted. Regardless of their designation as horse heaven ( English horse heaven ) wild horses can be observed only in some parts of the Horse Heaven Hills grazing, particularly in the west of the chain near the Satus Pass. They were the main grazers in the hills for a short time and were driven out of them on a large scale by catching and farming. Even deer can only be seen in small numbers in the Horse Heaven Hills. The Yakama recently established pronghorns near Satus Pass.

A small paleontological survey in Benton County identified numerous fossil skeletons, including prehistoric mammoths , bison , primitive horses, and other mammals that once populated the hills. Most of the skeletal finds were made in the canyons under fine clay and sand. They are mostly around 7,000… 12,000 years old; some are significantly older. In the higher elevations in which the discoveries were made, there are now extinct species that survived the Missoula floods at the end of the last ice age. A science foundation was established to support research at the site of a mammoth exposed south of Kennewick.

Individual evidence

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  2. ^ USGS US Board of Geographic Names . Retrieved January 28, 2019.
  3. ^ Washington State Department of Transportation (2014). Washington State Highways 2014-2015 [map]. Retrieved September 27, 2018.
  4. ↑ Chapter 177: State Highway Routes Revised . In: Session Laws of the State of Washington, 1985 . Washington State Legislature, April 25, 1985, p. 674, (Retrieved September 19, 2018).
  5. ↑ Amon Canyon in the United States Geological Survey's Geographic Names Information System
  6. ↑ Yakima River Basin Study . United States Bureau of Reclamation . February 2011. Retrieved September 28, 2018.
  7. ^ About the EPA's work in the Columbia River Basin . Environmental Protection Agency . Retrieved September 28, 2018.
  8. ^ Dust Storm in Eastern Washington: Image of the Day . NASA Earth Observatory. Retrieved October 10, 2009.
  9. ^ Horse Heaven Hills . Washington State Wine. Retrieved September 27, 2018.
  10. ^ Corey Christiansen: Wet vs. Dry - Shedding some light on the Pacific Northwest rain shadow . The Weather Prediction. Retrieved September 27, 2018.
  11. ↑ Bickleton, WASHINGTON (450456) . Western Regional Climate Center. Retrieved November 16, 2015.
  12. ^ Conserving Soil and Water in the World's Driest Wheat Region . Certified Crop Adviser. Retrieved September 30, 2018.
  13. ^ Climatological Data, Washington . United States Environmental Data Service, NOAA , 1969.
  14. ^ Annette Cary: Solving a mystery: Why Tri-City ozone levels rival Seattle area . In: Tri-City Herald , July 27, 2016. Retrieved October 9, 2018. 
  15. ^ Verne F. Ray: Tribal Distribution in Eastern Oregon and adjascant regions . In: American Anthropologist . 1938, pp. 385-386. Retrieved September 29, 2018.
  16. ^ Umatilla Relationships with US - Making Treaties . Retrieved December 14, 2015.
  17. ↑ Patrick Lozar: “AN ANXIOUS DESIRE OF SELF PRESERVATION”: COLONIALISM, TRANSITION, AND IDENTITY ON THE UMATILLA INDIAN RESERVATION, 1860-1910 . University of Oregon , June 2013 (Retrieved September 29, 2018).
  18. ^ The Columbia River - Horse Heaven Hills, Washington . In: Columbia River Images . Retrieved September 29, 2018.
  19. ↑ The Volcanoes of Lewis and Clark - October 19, 1805 . In: United States Geological Survey . Retrieved September 29, 2018.
  20. ^ Legacy Washington - Benton County . In: Washington Secretary of State . Retrieved September 30, 2018.
  21. ↑ Tammy Ayer: Wheat harvest in the Horse Heaven Hills: 'We take care of each other' . In: Yakima Herald-Republic , August 6, 2016. 
  22. ↑ Elizabeth Sihler: Against Odds: A personal narrative of life in Horse Heaven (accessed September 30, 2018).
  23. ^ Benton County History . In: Benton County . Archived from the original on September 27, 2007. Retrieved September 29, 2018.
  24. ↑ Elizabeth Gibson: Prosser - Thumbnail History . In: HistoryLink . September 20, 2006. Retrieved September 29, 2018.
  25. ^ Bluebirds & Bloodlines . In: Pacific Northwest Magazine , The Seattle Times, May 27, 2001. Archived from the original on June 8, 2001. Retrieved September 15, 2018. 
  26. ^ Washington Place Names database . Tacoma Public Library. Archived from the original on September 5, 2012. Retrieved October 30, 2012.
  27. ↑ Bickleton, WA Post Office . In: United States Postal Service . Retrieved September 30, 2018.
  28. ↑ SE Bryan, IU Peate, DW Peate, S. Self, DA Jerram, MR Mawby, JS Marsh, JA Miller: The largest volcanic eruptions on Earth . In: Earth Science Reviews . 102, No. 3-4, July 21, 2010, pp. 207-229. doi : 10.1016 / j.earscirev.2010.07.001 .
  29. ^ Michael Hagood: Structure and Evolution of the Horse Heaven Hills in South-Central Washington . Portland State University , 1985 (Retrieved September 30, 2018).
  30. ^ A Summary of Information on the Behavior of the Yakima Fold Belt as a Structural Entity . Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, August 2012 (accessed September 30, 2018).
  31. ^ Science writer Richard Hill gives a brief geologic history of the Columbia River Gorge . In: The Oregonian . Archived from the original on August 4, 2008. Retrieved June 15, 2008. 
  32. ^ The Columbia River - A photographic journey . Archived from the original on October 27, 2006.
  33. ↑ Bruce Bjornstad: On the Trail of the Ice Age Floods: A Geological Guide to the Mid-Columbia Basin . Keokee Books, Sandpoint, Idaho 2006, ISBN 978-1-879628-27-4 .
  34. ^ The Land - Horse Heaven Hills . In: Double Canyon . Retrieved September 30, 2018.
  35. ^ Washington State Public Lands Inventory . In: Washington State Recreation and Conservation Office . Retrieved October 8, 2018.
  36. ^ Horse Heaven Hills Wilderness Charter . In: Bureau of Land Management . October 24, 2018. Retrieved October 8, 2018.
  37. ↑ a b Kate Prengaman: State plan for irrigation project in Horse Heaven Hills leaves wheat farmers frustrated . In: Yakima Herald-Republic , November 14, 2016. Retrieved October 8, 2018. 
  38. ^ T. Parker: Discovering Washington Wines . Raconteurs Press, 2002, ISBN 0-9719258-5-2 , p. 85.
  39. ^ Code of Federal Regulations. "Section 9.1888 Horse Heaven Hills." Title 27: Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms; Part 9 - American Viticultural Areas; Subpart C - Approved American Viticultural Areas. . Archived from the original on February 12, 2012. Retrieved January 30, 2008.
  40. ^ Washington 50-Meter Community-Scale Wind Resource Map . In: US Department of Energy . June 2002. Retrieved October 8, 2018.
  41. ^ Nine Canyon Wind Project . In: Energy Northwest . Retrieved October 8, 2018.
  42. ↑ Juniper Canyon Wind Farm . In: Power Technology . Retrieved October 8, 2018.
  43. ^ Horse Heaven Hills (Benton City) . April 18, 2010. Retrieved October 9, 2018.
  44. ↑ Jason Fidorra: 2018 Hunting Prospects - District 4 . Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, 2018 (Retrieved October 8, 2018).
  45. ^ Dan McShane: Horses and the Horse Heaven Hills . October 26, 2013. Retrieved October 9, 2018.
  46. ^ Willis E. Fry: A Paleontological Site Survey Conducted in the Horse Heaven Hills of South-Central Washington Archived from the original on June 10, 2011. In: Northwest Science . 43, No. 4, 1969, pp. 156-161.
  47. ↑ MCBONES Research Center Foundation . January 29, 2013. Retrieved October 10, 2018.