Cheney author John Soennichsen receives state historical award

TACOMA – John Soennichsen, a Cheney resident and author, has been awarded the John McClelland Award for his Columbia magazine article, “A Toe in the Water: J. Harlen Bretz's First Field Exploration of Eastern Washington's Channeled Scablands,” by the Washington State Historical Society Board of Trustees. The article sets out in detail Bretz's initial field visit to the Eastern Washington scablands in 1922 that engendered his theory that a massive flood, not a slow retreat of glaciers, created the landscape.

The award recognizes the best article in the 2011 volume of “Columbia: The Magazine of...