Geologist J Harlen Bretz spent decades defending a theory that seemed too outlandish to accept: that the bizarre landscape of eastern Washington had been carved by catastrophic flooding. The scientific establishment resisted until aerial photography revealed the truth. The Channeled Scablands bear the unmistakable marks of rushing water - giant current ripples, streamlined loess islands, dry waterfalls, and coulees carved into solid basalt. Dry Falls once carried more water than all the world's rivers combined, a 400-foot cascade nearly four miles wide. Banks Lake now fills the Grand Coulee, a canyon carved in mere days by ice-age floods. The evidence is everywhere, once you know how to read it.

Grand Coulee Dam is the largest concrete structure in the United States and among the largest hydroelectric producers in the world. Built during the Depression, it transformed the Columbia from a wild river into a managed system of reservoirs and generating stations. The power it produced helped build the atomic bombs of World War II at the Hanford Site downstream - a facility that manufactured plutonium for decades and left behind the most contaminated nuclear site in the Western Hemisphere. Today, Hanford is undergoing a decades-long cleanup, and the historic B Reactor offers tours to visitors willing to confront the complex legacy of American nuclear ambition.

The same basalt that created the scablands creates ideal conditions for viticulture: rocky, well-drained soils that stress grapevines into producing intensely flavored fruit, plus long summer days and cool nights on the high plateau. Walla Walla and the Yakima Valley have emerged as two of America's premier wine regions, supporting hundreds of wineries. The Yakima Valley also produces three-quarters of all hops grown in the United States - the region's beer industry traces directly to its agricultural roots. Irrigation from the Columbia and its tributaries turned sagebrush country into farmland; today the plateau grows apples, wheat, potatoes, and an astonishing variety of produce in what was once considered wasteland.

Summer temperatures routinely exceed 100F in the Tri-Cities; winter can bring subzero cold and occasional heavy snow. Rattlesnakes are common outside developed areas. The plateau offers some of the most dramatic geology in North America - from the hexagonal basalt columns at Frenchman Coulee to the ancient petroglyph sites along the Columbia. Kennewick Man, one of the oldest and most complete human skeletons found in North America, was discovered here, dated to nearly 9,000 years ago. The Whitman Mission National Historic Site commemorates a darker history: the 1847 killing of Marcus Whitman and others by Cayuse people, an event that triggered war and shaped the region's settlement. This is not gentle country. It rewards those willing to meet it on its own terms.