Oregon: 150 Years of Statehood; 150 Million Years in the Making

Photo: Ellen Morris Bishop

Oregon’s oldest rocks formed off the Idaho coast. Collision with North America produced Oregon’s first crust, now found in the Klamath Mountains, Hell’s Canyon.

Like its people, Oregon’s landscape is diverse. It was built from many parts, each adding its own character to the state. Oregon grows and matures as islands and pieces of continents come crashing in, the Cascades erupt, lava covers the landscape, desert mountains grow, and huge floods sculpt the scenery. Oregon is indeed a masterpiece of geologic artistry! This assembly is traced through the first 4 windows of the exhibit.

Did you know that the coastline of North America used to run through Idaho? The land we now know as Oregon was assembled over more than 150 million years as small pieces of continents, manufactured elsewhere, “crashed” into North America. As shown in Window 1, North America then grew westward. The plate tectonics forces driving this process continue today (see Window 2)!

Digging Deeper: For more information, visit these websites.

View animations and maps of the changing Earth over time at these sites. How has the rest of the world changed over the past 150 million years?

The Educational Multimedia Visualization Center (University of California, Santa Barbara):

http://emvc.geol.ucsb.edu/index.htm

The Paleomap Project:

http://www.scotese.com/

The PLATES Project (University of Texas at Austin):

http://www.ig.utexas.edu/research/projects/plates/

Paleogeography and Geologic Evolution of North America (Northern Arizona University):

http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~rcb7/nam.html

Digging Deeper: For more information, give this sample of books on Oregon geology a read:

Geology of Oregon, 5th Edition by Elizabeth L. Orr and William N. Orr (2000, Kendall/Hunt [http://www.kendallhunt.com/]) Professors at the University of Oregon, the Orr’s have been writing about Oregon’s geology for decades.

In Search of Ancient Oregon by Ellen Morris Bishop (2003, Timber Press [http://www.timberpress.com/]) Take a photographic journey through time and see Oregon’s ancient places.

Thomas Condon (Window 10) wrote the first edition of the first book on Oregon’s geology: The Two Islands in 1902. Long out of print, it remains a classic. Visit your local used bookstore.

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