http://www.oregonlive.com/metrosouth/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/metro_south_news/1110624954319420.xml
A rock of the ages A fledgling group proposes a full-size replica of the Willamette Meteorite as part of a comprehensive showcase Thursday, March 17, 2005 DANA TIMS Mark Buser is picking up a flood of company in his efforts to memorialize both the largest meteorite found in the United States and the cataclysmic deluges 15,000 years ago credited with sweeping it from an ice sheet in southern Canada to a hillside resting point in what is now West Linn. Buser, vice president of the West Linn Chamber of Commerce, has logged long hours the past year trying to generate renewed interest in making the Willamette Meteorite a prime drawing card for tourists to the city's historic Willamette District. With the help of geologists and science buffs throughout the state, he's intent on tying the tale of the 15.5-ton meteorite and ice age flooding that reshaped an area stretching from Montana to Astoria and from north of Vancouver to as far south as Eugene. Group members include meteorite experts, two U.S. Geological Survey scientists and a longtime marketing professional who led the fund-raising effort that helped finance Raymond Kaskey's towering "Portlandia" sculpture in downtown Portland. They recently formed the first Oregon chapter of the Ice Age Floods Institute and are mapping strategies to tackle everything from a full-size replica of the Willamette Meteorite to a traveling exhibit showcasing the huge space rock. A trail following the floods In the process, they want to play a role in completing the Oregon end of a proposed Ice Age Floods National Geologic Trail. The trail would allow motorists to follow the 600-mile path of prehistoric floods so immense that they crested the Columbia Gorge's Crown Point and deposited much of the topsoil credited with making the Willamette Valley one of the world's most fertile regions. "There are very few physical features in an area covering hundreds of square miles that weren't dramatically affected by these floods," said Buser, who lives in West Linn. "Really, anything we accomplish through these efforts pretty much belongs to the entire state." Charles Hall, a Beaverton resident and longtime marketer, thinks the effort has a good chance of succeeding. "There are two beautiful and compelling stories entwined here," he said. "One is the formation of a meteorite deep in the solar system and how it was annealed as it came through the atmosphere at 9,000 degrees, nose-cone first, before striking the Earth. The other are the floods that washed it to Oregon. Put those together and you really have images bound to strike the public's interest." The new group, formally named the Lower Columbia Chapter of the Ice Age Floods Institute, is working on strategies, Hall said. "We don't have any specific targets yet. But given the success of formulas we used to raise money for 'Portlandia,' we're feeling very good about moving ahead with the meteorite." The Willamette Meteorite actually left Oregon 100 years ago. A New York socialite bought the rock after it was displayed at the 1905 Lewis & Clark Exposition in Portland. It now sits as a prime exhibit in the American Museum of Natural History in New York. The first two pieces of the financial puzzle needed to proceed with the project are tied to a $20,000 grant the group is seeking from the Clackamas County Tourism Development Council and a like amount from the city of West Linn. "We've got a lot of other options, including various grants from private foundations," Buser said. "But we've also got a long way to go." Ice dam unleashes floods The floods, at least 25 of them according to scientific estimates, swept through the Columbia River Gorge between 12,000 and 17,000 years ago. They were unleashed when a towering ice dam near modern-day Missoula, Mont., lifted and broke from the weight of millions of gallons of water stored behind it. The largest flood carried 10 million cubic meters of water a second, an amount roughly 10 times the combined annual discharge of all the world's rivers. The water, rushing at speeds reaching 75 mph, raced down the gorge toward the Portland area. Constricted by the narrows near Kalama, Wash., some of the water blew into the Willamette Valley at West Linn. It covered the valley as far south as Eugene, leaving only the tops of Rocky Butte, Mount Scott and other elevated peaks around Portland above the 400 feet of water. Other torrents blasted into the Tualatin Valley, carving out a "kolk" depression that, millennia later, was deepened by humans to create Oswego Lake. "This was one of the biggest geological events in world history," said Scott Burns, a Portland State University geologist who is a member of the newly formed Ice Age Floods Institute chapter. "Modern people have no understanding of something this cataclysmic." That the floods carried the ice-encased Willamette Meteorite from a broken ice shelf to a West Linn hillside is equally enthralling to Richard Pugh of Portland State University's Cascadia Meteorite Laboratory. He's convinced that the full-sized replica the group wants to build and exhibit would make West Linn a regionwide tourism draw. "I think this will have tremendous appeal to a number of different groups," said Pugh, who 20 years ago published one of the first scientific papers arguing that the meteorite didn't land in West Linn but floated there in a huge ice cube. "Everybody wins." ______________________________________________ Meteorite-list mailing list Meteorite-list@meteoritecentral.com http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list
