Joseph Thomas Pardee (May 30, 1871, in

Salt Lake City Salt Lake City (often shortened to Salt Lake and abbreviated as SLC) is the capital and most populous city of Utah, United States. It is the seat of Salt Lake County, the most populous county in Utah. With a population of 200,133 in 2020, th ...

, Utah; † March 2, 1960, in

Philipsburg, Montana Philipsburg is a town in and the county seat of Granite County, Montana, United States. The population was 841 at the 2020 census. The town was named after the famous mining engineer Philip Deidesheimer, who designed and supervised the construct ...

) was a U.S. geologist who worked for the U.S. Geological Survey, and contributed to the understanding of the origin of the

Channeled Scablands The Channeled Scablands are a relatively barren and soil-free region of interconnected relict and dry flood channels, coulees and cataracts eroded into Palouse loess and the typically flat-lying basalt flows that remain after cataclysmic floods ...

. He discovered the trail of evidence left by

Glacial Lake Missoula Lake Missoula was a prehistoric proglacial lake in western Montana that existed periodically at the end of the last ice age between 15,000 and 13,000 years ago. The lake measured about and contained about of water, half the volume of Lake Mic ...

, a lake created by an ice dam wide and high during the most recent

ice age An ice age is a long period of reduction in the temperature of Earth's surface and atmosphere, resulting in the presence or expansion of continental and polar ice sheets and alpine glaciers. Earth's climate alternates between ice ages and gre ...

. He discovered that when the dam broke, the water flowed towards the scablands, supporting

J Harlen Bretz J Harlen Bretz (2 September 1882 – 3 February 1981) was an American geologist, best known for his research that led to the acceptance of the Missoula Floods and for his work on caves. Early life and education Bretz was born on 2 September 18 ...

's theory of the cataclysmic floods.

Biography

Born in Salt Lake City, Joe grew up in a mining family. The family moved to Philipsburg, Montana, when Joe was three, and his father developed the Algonquin mine. Joe's education was at

Presbyterian College Presbyterian College (PC) is a private Presbyterian liberal arts college in Clinton, South Carolina. History Presbyterian College was founded in 1880 by the William Plumer Jacobs. He had served as the pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Cl ...

in Deer Lodge, Montana, and the

University of California The University of California (UC) is a public land-grant research university system in the U.S. state of California. The system is composed of the campuses at Berkeley, Davis, University of California, Irvine, Irvine, University of Califor ...

at Berkeley. After college he opened an

assay office Assay offices are institutions set up to assay (test the purity of) precious metals. This is often done to protect consumers from buying fake items. Upon successful completion of an assay (i.e. if the metallurgical content is found be equal or bett ...

and operated a gold and sapphire mine, but a growing interest in geology led him to the USGS. He was appointed to the Survey in 1909 and retired in 1941. During 32 years of work, his investigations ranged from glacial deposits to gold deposits, from mine sites to dam sites. Joe Pardee spent most of his career on geology in the northwestern United States, with particular emphasis on Montana. His research in Montana helped to reveal how the

in the southeastern part of the U.S. state of

Washington Washington commonly refers to: * Washington (state), United States * Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States ** A metonym for the federal government of the United States ** Washington metropolitan area, the metropolitan area centered o ...

were created.See: * * *

References

External links

* 20th-century American geologists 1871 births 1960 deaths People from Granite County, Montana University of California, Berkeley alumni {{US-geologist-stub

Biography

See also

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External links