GLACIAL BORDER OF SPOKANE 
361 
Deep Creek Canyon, eight miles northwest of Spokane, at about 
1750 feet elevation; and the highest north are at Mica, twelve 
miles southeast of Spokane, at 2475 feet elevation. Well-drilling 
in a number of localities indicates that these lacustral deposits are 
regularly interbedded with the successive flows of basalt. 
No indication is found of notable disturbance of the horizontal 
position of these clays. This fact indicates rather remarkable 
static conditions prevailing in this area, considering the great dis¬ 
turbances which were there going.on so near at hand in the uplift 
of the Cascade ranges and even nearer in the folding which pro¬ 
duced Saddle Mountain. That one great critical rupture actually 
did occur, however, there is good evidence. After the last lava- 
flow, and before the date of the great glaciation, it seems that 
faulting took place from Tekoa Mountain to the hills northwest 
of Dartford. This is indicated by the straight line of the valleys 
of Latah Creek (locally called Hangman Creek) and Spokane 
River below Spokane, and by the decapitation of southwestward 
flowing streams. 
Since Pardee, in the Colville Indian Reservation, and Weaver, 
in Stevens County, found that the Columbia lavas flowed con¬ 
siderable distances up narrow valleys, so in this area, which is 
continuous eastwardly with the areas of their work, we may 
explain the many detached masses of basalt by remembering that 
since they flowed into the valleys, a long period elapsed in which 
weathering, water-erosion, and ice-erosion have all made greater 
changes in the level of the crystalline rocks than of the basalt, 
and in some instances what were then the hills are now the valleys, 
with the more resistant basalt which filled the old valleys making 
their walls. 
One additional feature should be noted in this connection, but 
to account for its presence no explanation is here ventured; — this 
is the much discussed Palouse Soil. This layer of soil, with a 
depth of 200 feet or more, reclines directly upon the Columbia 
River basalts in the southern portion of the Spokane area. In 
some instances thin edges of it are found over-lying the crystalline 
rocks. The Spokane area is bordered on the west and southwest 
by the “Big Bend Country,” and on the south by the “Palouse 
Country.” The differences in these two tracts are chiefly due to 
