by Skip Via
skip@westvalleynaturalists.org

Welcome to a virtual tour of some of the Flathead Valley’s prominent (and some not so prominent) geological features, courtesy of Google Earth.

This tour is a companion piece to several articles that have appeared elsewhere on our website:

• Water Water Everywhere?
• Glaciers, Faults, and Tectonics
• Basins and Ranges
• All About Argillite
• The Mystery of Tally Lake

This inspiration for this project came largely from the work of Dr. Lex Blood, professor emeritus, Flathead Valley Community College, for his extensive (and clearly heartfelt) efforts to make the geological history of the valley accessible to everyone. Thank you, Lex.

We’ll be adding elements to the tour over time, which we’ll announce in our newsletter.

Taking the Tour

The tour is self-guided. There is no narration and you have several options for navigating, all of which are explained in the video below.

At this time, the tour will work on desktop or laptop computers and on iPads which have been updated to the most recent version of iPadOS. It will also work on Chromebooks. We do not recommend trying it on a mobile phone. It will work on most web browsers such as Chrome, Safari, and Firefox, but you may need to update to the latest versions.

Before you start the tour, we strongly recommend that you watch this short video to learn the many ways to navigate and explore on your own within the tour. You can’t mess anything up and there is always a way back, so feel free to experiment and move around.

PLEASE NOTE: Since this video was made, Google has made some changes to Google Earth. The only effect these changes have on the virtual tour involves the way you start the tour. Instead of clicking the Present button as instructed in the video, click the Slideshow button in the upper right corner of your browser window as shown below:

Now that you know how to get around, click the link below to start the tour:

START THE TOUR!