Palouse

Arboretum in Moscow, Idaho The origin of the name "Palouse" is unclear. One theory is that the name of the Palus tribe (spelled in early accounts variously as Palus, Palloatpallah, Pelusha, etc.) was converted by French-Canadian fur traders to the more familiar French word , meaning "land with short and thick grass" or "lawn." Over time, the spelling changed to Palouse. Another theory is that the region's name came from the French word and was later applied to its indigenous inhabitants. Traditionally, the Palouse region was defined as the fertile hills and prairies north of the Snake River, which separated it from Walla Walla County, and north of the Clearwater River, which separated it from the Camas Prairie, extending north along the Washington and Idaho border, south of Spokane and centered on the Palouse River. The region had a settlement and wheat-growing boom during the 1880s, part of a larger process of growing wheat in southeast Washington, originally pioneered in Walla Walla County south of the Snake River. While this definition of the Palouse remains common today, the term is sometimes used to refer to the entire wheat-growing region, including Walla Walla County, the Camas Prairie of Idaho, the Big Bend region of the central Columbia River Plateau, and other smaller agricultural districts such as Asotin County, Washington, and Umatilla County, Oregon. This larger definition is used by organizations such as the World Wide Fund for Nature, who define the Palouse Grasslands ecoregion broadly. The community of Palouse, Washington is located in Whitman County, about west of Potlatch, Idaho. Nevertheless, the traditional definition of the Palouse region is distinct from the older Walla Walla region south of the Snake River, where dryland farming of wheat was first proved to be viable in the region in the 1860s. During the 1870s, the Walla Walla region was rapidly converted to farmland, while the initial experiments in growing wheat began in the Palouse region, which previously had been the domain of cattle and sheep ranching. When those trials turned out to be more than successful, a minor land rush quickly filled the Palouse region with farmers during the 1880s. The simultaneous proliferation of railroads only increased the rapid settlement of the Palouse. By 1890 nearly all the Palouse lands had been taken up and converted to wheat farming. At least four centers were established all within several miles of each other: Colfax (the oldest), Palouse, Pullman, and on the Idaho side, Moscow. The four centers, along with at least ten lesser ones, resulted in a diffuse pattern of rural centers. Cities along the borders of the Palouse and by some definitions included within it, include Lewiston, Idaho, serving the Camas Prairie farmlands; Ritzville, serving the eastern edge of the Big Bend Country; and Spokane, the region's major urban hub. So dominant was Spokane's position that it became known as the capital of the Inland Empire, including all the wheat-producing regions, the local mining districts, and lumber-producing forests. Spokane also served as the region's main railroad and transportation hub. By 1910, although local terms including Palouse, Walla Walla Country, Big Bend, Umatilla County, and Camas Prairie continued to be common, many people of the region began to regard themselves as living in the Inland Empire, the Wheat Belt, the Columbia Basin, or Eastern Washington, Oregon, or North Idaho. Farming Early farming was extremely labor-intensive and relied heavily on human and horse-power. An organized harvesting/threshing team in the 1920s required 120 men and 320 mules and horses. Teams moved from farm to farm as the crops ripened. By this point, the combine had been invented and was in use, but few farmers had enough horses to pull such a machine, which required a crew of 40 horses and six men to operate on level ground. It was only when the Idaho Harvester Company in Moscow began to manufacture a smaller machine that combine harvesting became feasible. By 1930, 90% of all Palouse wheat was harvested using combines. Image:Palouse fields from Kamiak Butte 00-08-23.jpg|View of the Palouse fields from Kamiak Butte, early summer Image:Palouse fields, Washington from Kamiak Butte.jpg|Palouse fields seen from Kamiak Butte, fall == Geology ==

The peculiar and picturesque loess hills which characterize the Palouse Prairie are underlain by wind-blown sediments of the Palouse Loess which covers the surface of over on the Columbia Plateau in southeastern Washington, western Idaho, and northeastern Oregon. The Palouse Loess forms a fine-grained mantle of variable thickness which lies upon either the Miocene Columbia River Basalt Group, non-glacial Pliocene fluvial sediments of the Ringold Formation, or Pleistocene glacial outburst flood sediments which are known informally as the Hanford formation. At its thickest, the Palouse Loess is up to thick. It consists of multiple layers of loess separated by multiple well-defined calcrete paleosols and erosional unconformities. The degree of development of individual layers of calcrete together with thermoluminescence and optically stimulated luminescence dating of the loess indicate that each calcrete layer represents a period of thousands to tens of thousands of years of nondeposition, weathering, and soil development that occurred between episodic periods of loess deposition. A consistent sequence of normal-reverse-normal polarity signatures demonstrates that the older layers of loess accumulated between 2 and 1 million years ago. Detailed optically stimulated luminescence dating has shown that the uppermost layer of Palouse Loess accumulated between 15,000 years ago and modern times and the layer of loess underlying it accumulated episodically between about 77,000 and 16,000 years ago. Regional trends in the distribution, thickness, texture, and overall composition of the Palouse Loess indicate that it largely consists of the wind-blown sediments eroded from fine-grained deposits of the Hanford formation that were periodically deposited by repeated Missoula floods within the Eureka Flats area. Although superficially resembling sand or other types of dunes, the loess hills of the Palouse are of far different origin. Internally, they lack any evidence of cross-bedding or erosion of interbedded layers of loess and calcrete that characterize dunes formed by moving currents. Instead, these hills consist of alternating layers of loess and calcrete that are more or less concordant with the modern surface of these hills. This layering demonstrates that the Palouse hills loess accumulated from the airfall of wind-silt from suspension. In addition, the ubiquitous homogenization of the loess by innumerable plant roots and insect burrows as it accumulated further supports the conclusion drawn from numerous thermoluminescence and optically stimulated luminescence dates that individual layers of loess accumulated over an extended period of time in terms of thousands of years. Finally, the calcrete horizons are paleosols that represent the periodic cessation of loess accumulation for periods of thousands of years during which they formed within the surface of a loess layer. ==Environment==

Once an extensive prairie composed of mid-length perennial grasses such as bluebunch wheatgrass (Agropyron spicatum) and Idaho fescue (Festuca idahoensis), today virtually all of the Palouse Prairie has been plowed or overrun by non-native species such as cheatgrass. The native prairie is one of the most endangered ecosystems in the United States, as only a little over one percent of the original prairie still exists. The only large preserved patches of this ecosystem left are found in Hells Canyon National Recreation Area and in the southern portion of Lake Roosevelt National Recreation Area in Washington. the negative environmental impact of agriculture has visibly decreased. Fauna Some animals in the region include both mule and white-tailed deer, coyotes, bobcats, California quails, yellow-bellied marmots, and red-tailed hawks. == Fires ==

While there is some debate over how frequently the Palouse prairie burned historically, there is consensus that fires are generally less frequent today than in the past, primarily due to fire suppression, construction of roads (which serve as barriers to fire spread) and conversion of grass and forests to cropland (Morgan et al. 1996). Historians recount lightning-ignited fires burning in the pine fringes bordering the prairies in late autumn, but the extent to which forest fires spread into the prairie or the converse is not known. Some fire ecologists believe the Nez Perce burned the Palouse and Camas Prairies to encourage growth of camas (Morgan, pers. comm.); but there is little historical record of it. European-American settlers used fire to clear land for settlement and grazing until the 1930s. Since then, forest fires have become less common. One result has been increasing tree density on forested lands and encroachment of shrubs and trees into previously open areas. ==See also==