EASTERN OREGON UNIVERSITY GEOLOGY
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Eastern OregonUniversity is located in the La Grande Basin, a graben in the Blue Mountains of Eastern Oregon. Our area has been referred to as "a geological wrecking yard" of 240-200 million year old tropical volcanic island arcs, 150-100 million year old granitic batholiths, 40-20 million year old andesitic and rhyolitic volcanics, and 16-2 million year old Columbia River flood basalts and Powder River andesites, all deformed by block faulting and carved by Pleistocene glaciers. We’re close to the Wallowa and Elkhorn Mountains, Hells Canyon, the John Day Fossil Beds, the Owyhee volcanic area and a lot of other spectacular geologic sites. And, the Cascades, the Oregon coast, Yellowstone, Glacier National Park and other areas are within a day’s drive! It is a great place to study geology!
We are a group of students and faculty who love going out on field trips and learning about the geologic history of the beautiful area we live in.
· PHI BETA ROCK (THE EOU GEOLOGY CLUB)
· EASTERN OREGON GEOLOGY (OUR ON-LINE JOURNAL)
· RECENT FINDS AT THE ALWAYS WELCOME INN
· STUDENT AND FACULTY PUBLICATIONS
Click here to see the syllabi for our classes.
Our faculty include:
JAY VAN TASSELL: Jay grew up on LakeWaccabuc in South Salem, New York, and went to Bowdoin College in Maine for his undergraduate geology and physics degrees he moved on to Wisconsin, where he studied coastal erosion on the Keweenaw Peninsula of Lake Superior for his M.S. in Oceanography and Limnology. Jay received his Ph.D. in Geological Oceanography in 1979 from Duke University, where he studied erosion on the North Carolina coast and turbidity current deposition on the ocean floor offshore of the Bahamas. He moved on to Guilford College in North Carolina, where he taught for seven years and studied the Devonian sediments of Virginia and West Virginia. Jay arrived at Eastern in 1988. He met his wife, April, in his 1989 Physical Geology class and they were engaged by the end of the quarter! Jay has studied the geologic history of the Grande Ronde Valley, the sediments and bathymetry of Wallowa Lake, and the fossils and sediments of the Baker City and Keating areas, including the 4.5 million year old Always Welcome Inn fossils. Jay and his students are currently preparing and studying the mammoth, bear, bison, and squirrel fossils that were found near the La Grande airport in January 2010. Jay advises the EOU geology club, Phi Beta Rock.
Jay and April Van Tassell pose for the camera many moons ago.
MARK FERNS: Mark retired in 2011 from the Oregon State Department of Geology and Mineral Industries in Baker City and is now adjunct professor of geology at EOU. Mark's knowledge of the geology of Eastern Oregon has proven invaluable! In 2011 Mark worked with the Geophysical Field Camp at Neal Hot Springs that was organized by Boise State University, the Colorado School of Mines, and Trinity College, London. He also helped students and faculty from the University of Nevada-Reno, Boise State University study, Portland State University, the University of Texas- Houston, and Whitman College study the geology of northeast Oregon, including projects focusing on Neal Hot Springs, the North Fork of the Burnt River, the Three Fingers area, the Dinner Creek tuff near Baker City, and the Grande Ronde Valley. Mark also helped to identify a gold nugget used in a mining swindle in Baker City in the late 1800's as a possible fraud made by chemically precipitating gold onto another specimen!
