Crab Creek
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Crab Creek is one of the few perennial streams in the Columbia Basin, flowing from the northeastern Columbia River Plateau, roughly 5 km (3 miles) east of Reardan, Washington, west-southwest to empty into the Columbia River near the small town of Beverly, Washington. Its course displays many examples of the erosive powers of extremely large floods such as those that reformed the Crab Creek valley during the late Pleistocene glacial Missoula Floods.
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[edit] Divisions of the creek
The stream is normally separated into Upper Crab Creek, which stretches from Moses Lake and Lower Crab Creek, which stretches from the confluence of the creek with the Columbia River up to Moses Lake. Crab Creek drains a watershed in eastern Washington of 4,840 mi² (12,500 km²).
[edit] Lakes
Drifting sand dunes impounded Crab Creek and created Moses Lake, the largest natural lake on the creek.
The Bureau of Reclamation’s Columbia Basin Project (CBP) in central Washington State changed the character of Crab Creek substantially. The Crab Creek irrigation-return drainage basin covers an irrigated area of 296 mi² (767 km²). A large earthfill dam, the O'Sullivan Dam (also referred to as the Potholes Dam) was constructed from 1947 to 1949, forming Potholes Reservoir, which serves as a central point in the CBP for storage of irrigation water, natural runoff, and irrigation-return flow, allowing irrigation water reuse throughout the southern CBP area. Potholes Reservoir releases water through canals and has no perennial outlet to Lower Crab Creek. Hence today the water in Lower Crab Creek comes from ground-water seepage from Potholes Reservoir and irrigation, from the Goose Lake Wasteway, and from tributary inflows downstream of the O’Sullivan Dam.[1]
[edit] Recreation on the creek
Potholes State Park is a 640-acre (260-hectare) park on the shore of the Potholes Reservoir. It provides ready access to the Drumheller Channels National Natural Landmark which lies just downstream of the O’Sullivan Dam. This National Natural Landmark is an extensively eroded channeled scablands landscape, characterized by hundreds of isolated, steep-sided hills (buttes) surrounded by a braided network of numerous channels. All but the channel through which Crab Creek flows are currently dry. It is a classic example of the tremendous erosive powers of extremely large floods such as those that reformed the Columbia Plateau volcanic terrain during the late Pleistocene glacial Missoula Floods.[2][3][4][5]
There are five wildlife areas found along Crab Creek:[6]
- Crab Creek Wildlife Area runs from the Columbia River east along the north face of the Saddle Mountains until Othello, Washington.
- Seep Lakes Wildlife Area is colocated with Drumheller Channels National Natural Landmark.
- Potholes Wildlife Area is adjacent to Potholes Reservoir.
- Gloyd Seeps Wildlife Area is north of Moses Lake.
- North Columbia Basin Wildlife Area - Gloyd Seeps is north of Gloyd Seeps Wildlife Area
[edit] History
Since it is one of the few creeks in the region with reliable water, Spokane and Palouse Indians roamed along Crab Creek to gather roots and other food. A main Indian trail through the region followed the creek. Lt. Symons came past the mid-Crab Creek area while laying out the Military Wagon Road from Fort Walla Walla to Camp Chelan in 1879. The Old Wagon Road was established along the creek from Waterville, Washington to Ritzville, Washington in 1888. [7]
Prior to establishing irrigation, most of the areas along Upper Crab Creek were bunchgrass prairie, which was suited to range cattle and sheep. Crab Creek and tributary creeks provided water for the herds. Although a handful of ranchers ran herds, shipping their bunchgrass-fed beef to Montana by rail from towns like Sprague, settlement remained extremely sparse. One such example was George Lucas, an Irish emigrant, who was Adams County's first permanent white settler. He established a way-station and raised cattle and horses at Cow Creek along the road to Fort Colville in 1869.[8]
Lower Crab Creek provided the only available water in that shrub-steppe region and so became the nucleus of settlement. Ben and Sam Hutchinson built the first recorded cabin along Lower Crab Creek in 1884. Tom McManamon, a cattle rancher, arrived shortly thereafter, with the first homesteaders arriving in 1901 and the town of Othello being established in 1904.[8]
When the Bureau of Reclamation located district offices in Othello in 1947 and built the Columbia Irrigation Project, the nature of the until then sparsely populated country changed dramatically.[8]
[edit] Geologic history
The Okanogan lobe of the Cordilleran Glacier moved down the Okanogan River valley and blocked the ancient route of the Columbia River, backing up water to create Lake Spokane. As the Okanogan lobe grew the Columbia was rerouted into the Grand Coulee. Flowing across the current Grand Coulee-Dry Falls region, the ice-age Columbia then entered the Quincy Basin near Quincy, Washington & joined Crab Creek at Moses Lake, following Crab Creek’s course southward past the Frenchman Hills and turning west to run along the north face of the Saddle Mountains, there to rejoin the previous and modern course of the Columbia River just above the main water gap in the Saddle Mountains, Sentinel Gap.[5]
During this period the Missoula Floods periodically discharged large volumes of water, some of which reached Upper Crab Creek by overtopping the divide between the Columbia drainage and the Crab Creek drainage, and some diverted into the Columbia River to enter Crab Creek at Moses Lake. As a result, substantial coulees and scablands were created in the Upper Crab Creek drainage, and the drainage below the Potholes Reservoir is overlarge (i.e., the channel sizes could contain a substantially larger river than currently flows there). [5]
[edit] Coordinates
| Location[6] | Coordinates |
|---|---|
| Upper Crab Creek Headwaters | |
| Sylvan Lake | |
| Upper Crab Creek at Irby | |
| Upper Crab Creek turns south | |
| Gloyd Seeps Wildlife Area | |
| Moses Lake | |
| Potholes Reservoir | |
| Drumheller Channels | |
| Lower Crab Creek flows west | |
| Red Rock Coulee | |
| Confluence of Crab Creek with Columbia River |
[edit] References
- ^ [ http://www.usbr.gov/dataweb/projects/washington/columbiabasin/history.html Columbia Basin Project Bureau of Reclamation History Program Research on Historic Reclamation Projects]
- ^ Alt, David (2001). Glacial Lake Missoula & its Humongous Floods. Mountain Press Publishing Company. ISBN 0-87842-415-6.
- ^ Bjornstad, Bruce (2006). On the Trail of the Ice Age Floods: A Geological Guide to the Mid-Columbia Basin. Keokee Books; San Point, Idaho. ISBN 978-1-879628-27-4.
- ^ J Harlen Bretz, (1923), The Channeled Scabland of the Columbia Plateau. Journal of Geology, v.31, p.617-649
- ^ a b c Mueller, Ted and Marge (1997). Fire, Faults & Floods. University of Idaho Press, Moscow, Idaho. ISBN 0-89301-206-8.
- ^ a b (2002) Washington Road and Recreation Atlas. Medford, Oregon: Benchmark Maps. ISBN 0-929591-53-4.
- ^ [1]
- ^ a b c [2]
| Glacial Lake Missoula | Missoula Floods | Channeled scablands | Grand Coulee | Dry Falls | Drumheller Channels | Columbia River Plateau | Wallula Gap | Touchet Formation | Lake Lewis | Columbia River Gorge | Columbia River Basalt Group | Palouse Falls | Sims Corner Eskers and Kames | Moses Coulee | Withrow Moraine | Crab Creek | Corfu Slide
