10 Facts About Palouse

Palouse is a distinct geographic region of the northwestern United States, encompassing parts of north central Idaho, southeastern Washington, and, by some definitions, parts of northeast Oregon.

Palouse is home to two land-grant universities: the University of Idaho in Moscow and Washington State University in Pullman.

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, centered on the Palouse River.

Community of Palouse, Washington, is located in Whitman County, about 7 miles 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 viable in the region in the 1860s.

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Unlike the Walla Walla Country, which was solidly anchored on the city of Walla Walla, the Palouse region saw the rise of at least four centers, all within several miles of each other: Colfax, Palouse, Pullman, and on the Idaho side, Moscow.

Today, the Palouse region is the most important lentil-growing region in the USA.

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.

Once an extensive prairie composed of mid-length perennial grasses such as bluebunch wheatgrass and Idaho fescue (Festuca idahoensis), today virtually all of the Palouse Prairie has been plowed or overrun by non-native species such as cheatgrass.