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The Rocks and Fossils of the John Day Basin

The John Day National Monument (which WAS established by Congress in 1975, even though it could have been done by a President), encompasses three geographically unconnected "units" -- Sheep Rock, Painted Hills and Clarno Basin. Sheep Rock is where the Paleontology Center is and is less than 20 miles from Gordon and Joan's new place--a hop and a skip around here. Like a lot of people, at first we drove past things without knowing anything about what we were seeing. Everything is beautiful, but it really helps to pick up some maps and informational brochures at the Paleontology Center. For example, we drove by Goose Rock several times, complaining that we couldn't see anything that looked goose-like from either direction before we discovered that it was named for modern migrating Canadian geese who rest threre. Similarly, Sheep Rock (photo by Gary Halvorson, Oregon State Archives) appears to be named because mountain sheep like it there, not because it resembles a sheep in any way.

Even without any background, the driving around is fun. The roads and trails have signs naming them "Journey Through Time" or "Back in Time" or "Island of Time"---all of them imposed by the Parks Service, I assume. The local names are far less fanciful, things like "Cottonwood Creek." And there are plenty of cottonwoods, aspens, sunflowers and willows along the roads in addition to the scrubby evergreens. Indeed the word "Ochoco" (a campground, nearby mountain range, a National Forest, a dam, a lake, a lumber company, a motel, etc.) means "willow" in the language of some indigenous people, I don't know which, but likely Northern Paiute. And Cathedral Rock (photo by Gary Halvorson, Oregon State Archives), which we drove by almost every time we went out is gratifyingly enough like a cathedral -- probably named by the pioneers, not the Parks Service.

There are also a few good signs, reflecting the businesses and humor of the locals. "Wild Game Cooler" (not a drink), "Uncle Joe's Quality Hay for Sale," " Natural Beef, Just Like Grandpa Used to Raise," and--my personal favorite--"Trespassers Wanted for Medical Experiments."

But the big draw is the way this small part of the world exposes 50 million years worth of rock formations and plant and animal fossils from the Cenozoic, the "Age of Mammals and Flowering Plants" from about 5 to about 55 million years ago. So I think I'll try a geological arrangement instead of geographical or the order in which we saw them. Here's a quick overview from Wikipedia and one from away.com. The drawing is one they give out to help keep things straight.

Goose Rock is different than most of the formations around here, representing the very oldest exposed formations, made up of river delta and ocean sediments about 100 million years old, laid down during the Age of Reptiles, when this was the edge of the ocean.

(I think I'll just take a moment here to tell you that I don't understand how old, old things get located so far above newer things. Under what circumstances can a stand like this rock remain after millions of years of volcanic activity, rivers coming and going, giant earth quakes, mud slides hundreds of miles wide and everything else that's been going on? How can it end up three miles above the newer materials? I know that rivers and mudslides, as well as ordinary weather erosion can wash away softer materials, exposing older, harder formations, but it's still pretty close to unfathomable how this all works together leaving something 100 million years old ON TOP! Well, I'll never be a geologist, I guess, among other things. I KNOW I'll never be a rancher. I so admire the skills and perseverance of the folks around here. Even today, with all the "Mod Cons," life isn't easy. And I'm much too comfortable in my life in Portland. But sometimes, I wonder how different I would be if I had led such a life.)

Well, on to the Clarno Group. The timeframe is from 37 to 54 million years ago. The most dramatic representation is the Clarno Palisades *. We clambered around in this area for an entire afternoon and took lots of pictures. This is also the only place where we managed to recognize fossils. A fossil is defined as the preserved remains, imprints or traces of a living organism. We, of course, did not see any preserved remains, but there were plenty of traces on this hillside. Trace fossils are often called ichnofossils by the scientists, from the Greek for "trace." The trail here is well-marked with signs showing you what you're supposed to look for. Still is was hard to spot the leaf imprints at first. After a while, though, I got better at it and in the end, stopped counting when I reached several dozen leaves and lots of sticks and branches. A very satisfying experience, even though I was not able to pick out any nuts, another important find in this group.

Next in time comes the John Day Group, from 18 to 39 million years old. Sheep Rock is part of this formation period as is most of the valley we were visiting in. The Blue Basin, an excellent hiking area, was also formed during this time and, about 40 miles away and a few million years earlier, the spectacular Painted Hills This formation is on the southeast side of the valley. There are enough intriguing rocks nearby, the popcorn-looking formations for example, that I think you could spend a while here. The area appears to have some great trails, too, but after looking at the sweaty, panting 8-year-olds who had just descended, we decided to appreciate it from the photo op area.

The John Day Group is also where/when the most mammal fossils have been discovered. You can't get near to the actual mammal fossil sites, though, without a license and all sorts of other permissions. The Palentology Center is the place to learn about and examine these fossils. The day we were at the center, an oreodent skull was on the table ready to be carefully chipped out of the surrounding stone (which once was mud or lava).

The Picture Gorge Basalt group comes next, about 16 million years ago. There is a Picture Gorge you can drive through, representative of the rocks of this time, but no place to stop. Also, you have to be way better than we were to spot any of the pictographs or petroglyphs. Once I thought I saw a blobby bison-looking thing, but Bea didn't think so. It's the very narrow gorge, an old, old river bed, right in middle of the picture below. During the Picture Gorge Basalt time, lots of lava was laid down by lots of volcanoes to make lots of surface basalt.

This is the picture of the Mascall Formation, formed 12 to 15 million years ago. (Why is Mascall a Formation and everything else a Group? My Webster's Unabridged says a formation is "...any sedimentary bed or consecutive series of beds sufficiently homogeneous or distinctive to be regarded as a unit." And a group is a "...stratigraphic division of the first order comprising the rocks deposited during an era," a definition adopted by the International Geological Congress. Secondly, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, a group is two or more formations. Apparently there wasn't a lot of geological action during the 3 million years of the Mascal. Could have been a nice time to be alive.) There's a grand view from the lookout point. This was interesting to get to. Since the route goes through someone's pasture, we had to shoo curious cows off the road before we could drive there. I assume the cows aren't there much in the summer when there's more tourist traffic. But maybe they're always part of the experience. Cows before Tourists! During the Masalt Formation, the basalt weathered into soil and there were luxuriant savannas and woodlands and lots of animals.

The final Group (before the last 5 million years of so) is the Rattlesnake Group. The Rattlesnake Group/Formation is not as interesting as the previous cycles and shows mostly a prairie and grassland environment, much cooler and dryer than previously, an indication that the Coast Range (which started forming 35 million years ago) had eroded enough on either side to inhibit the wetter weather patterns formed over the ocean. So now this is desert, and just over the mountains, the Willamette Valley, where we live (Bea on the south end, me on the north end) is lush farm land.

There you have it, more than you wanted to know about geology in the middle of Northeastern Oregon. It was an excellent trip for us though, I can go back many times and always see and learn new things.

This is the end of this set of adventures. There may be no more travelogues before my Italy trip which starts in March. I am trying to figure out how to send things then without hauling my lap-top or spending inordinate amounts of time in cybe-cafes writing away. I'm taking suggestions on a small, concealable electronic device to compose on. With e-mail would be nice. Anyone have a favorite?

* In the U.S. "The Palisades" are almost always thought of as the cliffs above the Hudson River in New Jersey, possibly because it's such an amazing natural sight from New York City. However, "palisades" refers to any kind of columnar structure made up of vertical elements, like a fence made of tree-trunks.