From Washington To You
Buttes and basins of the Drumheller Channels scabland under a wide sky.
Photograph by Williamborg. Public domain.

From Washington to you

Drumheller Channels

Drumheller Channels · Grant County · designated a National Natural Landmark in 1986

A cascade of buttes and basins west of Othello is the Ice Age Floods landscape the National Park Service calls the most spectacular of its kind.

Drumheller Channels National Natural Landmark sits on Columbia National Wildlife Refuge land along West McManamon Road in Othello. NPS designated the landmark in 1986. The agency describes a cascade of channels eight to twelve miles wide, with about 150 channels and more than 180 rock basins.

The National Park Service calls this the most spectacular butte-and-basin scabland in the Ice Age Floods country. Floodwaters scoured the basalt into a maze of coulees, buttes, and closed basins that still hold water today. The landmark is one of the places NPS uses to explain the Missoula Floods on the Ice Age Floods National Geologic Trail.

Visitors reach the channels from the refuge roads west of Othello. The sources below are the National Park Service record of the landmark and the Ice Age Floods trail.

  • Geography & Geology

Sources (2)

Last reviewed: September 20, 2026

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Drumheller Channels · From Washington To You