Favorite Thing: Between 17 and 15.5 millions years ago, this region was a very fierce furnace of relentless flowing lavas, simply gigantic flows not ever again witnessed since Homo Sapiens time. So much of it, that some of the flows reached what is now the Pacific, 300 miles away! These magmas covered a huge area called the Columbia River Basalt Province (grey area on map). Most of it originated from
Grande Ronde canyon location (GR on map) in the Southeast corner of Washinton state. This "large igneous province" is one of the biggest basaltic province on Earth. There are only a few of them, for example the "Deccan traps" in India, the "Siberian traps", the "Karoo" in Southern Africa.
Fondest Memory: Please go see my
travelogue on Columbia River Plateau basalts for a glimpse of these gigantic flows!
Picture and some of the info from website below:
http://volcano.und.nodak.edu/vwdocs/volc_images/north_america/crb.html
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