When Does Spring Start, Really?

Spring, as a season, is defined in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary as "the season between winter and summer comprising in the northern hemisphere usually the months of March, April, and May or as reckoned astronomically extending from the March equinox to the June solstice". While the astronomical definition is easy enough, it doesn't seem to match meteorological spring, or at least it seems too broad a range of dates, considering how early and mid-June might be astronomically "spring" but is often as hot as the summer months of July and August. On the other hand, including early and mid-March within spring, if you define March, April, and May as the spring months, is a good joke. Where I've lived, winter weather persists through all of March and parts of April. Sure, there might be some thaws that happen in March, and maybe even some sprouting grass, but overall March is more like the last winter month to me. Many times, my "spring break" was in March when the trees were still bare, and the ground still had snow. Then, there are times when snowstorms, sometimes of great intensity, happen in March and especially April as winter has its last fun. "I cried for spring to come, but here, winter remain", as the lyric goes in Sabaton's "Soldier of Heaven".

Picture from Easter 2020: a basket of Easter eggs contrasts with snowfall outside.

What does define spring, in that case, apart from the time between the March equinox and the June solstice? I think we have to exclude snow from that definition, if our association of snow with winter is valid. In that case, spring should not have freezing temperatures at all. On the other hand, the hottest temperatures should be reserved for summer. There is, however, a broad range of temperatures between feeling hot and feeling cold enough to get frostbite. I choose this medium to define spring temperatures. At this point, the upper limit will vary from person to person. For me, I'd set it at 25 degrees Celsius, or 77 degrees Fahrenheit. There was only one Easter I can think of that actually felt slightly summer-like, and that was when the high temperature was at the temperature I just mentioned.

Therefore, I would say that spring in the Northern Hemisphere is all the days between January 1st and June 30th when the temperatures all day are from 0 to 25 degrees Celsius, or 32 to 77 degrees Fahrenheit. This covers any early warm days and any late cool days but excludes freezing cold days and hot days. For your amusement, I have a picture from possibly the earliest first day of spring by my definition: February 1st, 2020, when I was at South Dakota School of Mines and Technology and the high was 71 degrees Fahrenheit.

Are the Black Hills Really "Hills"?

For a long time, I've wondered what really distinguishes a hill from a mountain. Both are small areas of land with slopes on every side, but how tall does it have to be before it is a mountain?

Naming inconsistencies don't help. One such inconsistency is this. Mount Rushmore is a feature that most people immediately think of when they think of the Black Hills. However, if they were really hills, wouldn't that mean we should call it "Rushmore Hill"? Alternatively, if Mount Rushmore counts as a mountain, shouldn't the whole Black Hills be called the "Black Mountains"?

I say that climate differences make a good criterion for defining a mountain. Hills are not tall enough to be snowy on top while it rains at the bottom, but mountains are. So again, how tall does a mountain have to be in order to make that work?

As I mentioned in last week's post, the Black Hills are tall enough that a lot of snow falls there in contrast to the surrounding area. Indeed, snow might be unheard of in June through August in the flat areas of South Dakota, but not in the Black Hills, especially in the northern parts. The trees that grow from the moisture from snow and rain is enough to make the Black Hills almost synonymous with the extensive conifer forest that grows there, while the rest of the northern Great Plains has grassland (with the exception of some random forests here and there). That should make the Black Hills really a mountain range, except I don't think it's proper to call them a range of mountains. They're really one big mountain, I would say.

It seems that it takes at least a few hundred feet of elevation difference, if not a thousand, for climate differences to be very noticeable, along with the vegetation differences that go with them. For simplicity's sake, I say that it takes a thousand feet of elevation difference for a hill to be a mountain. For those who use the wonderful metric system, 300 meters would work too. I also say that a mountain should cover a small enough area that you can see most of its base from the summit.

From experience, I know you can see the base of the Black Hills from its summit, which rises about 4000 feet from the grasslands at the base. Rapid City is called the "Gateway to the Black Hills" for good reason, since the pine forest is found on the west side of the city and the grasslands are found on the east side. Geologically, it appears that the Lakota Formation, forming the outermost ridge where pine trees are found, is the ridge marking the boundary of the Black Hills. So again, the Black Hills should really be considered as one large mountain, though perhaps the Black "Hills" can refer to the many peaks of that mountain, few of which individually are over a thousand feet tall.

From the summit of the Black Hills, you can see way out to the Great Plains.

If we consider the Black Hills as many peaks of one mountain, that means South Dakota and Wyoming can boast of a 4000-foot-tall mountain. (Of course, Wyoming can boast of even higher mountains). South Dakota has another mountain besides that, though: Bear Butte. Even though it is described as a butte, it looks like any picturesque mountain, and its top is over a thousand feet above its base. It is often considered a part of the Black Hills, but I don't think so because there is flat grassland in between it and the pine forests of the Black Hills, even though the two are within sight of each other. I have hiked Bear Butte as well, and I'll end this blog post with my picture of it.

Bear Butte, rising about 1000 feet above the Great Plains close to the Black Hills, with more snow than the surrounding plains.

The Unusual Absence of Ice Age Glaciers in the Black Hills

In many areas of Alaska, Canada, and the northern United States, as well as many other regions of the world, geologists have found evidence of glacial activity in the not-too-distant (geologic) past. In North America, specifically, an ice sheet covered some parts of Alaska, almost all of Canada, and part or all of the American states on the Canadian border. If we focus on the Dakotas, the ice sheet left a rather interesting mark in the form of the Missouri River. The river got diverted to the southeast by the ice sheet, and now the bedrock of the Dakotas mostly follows the pattern of glacial deposits east and north of the river and older rocks west and south of the river.

This geologic map of South Dakota shows how "East River" in the orange to brown differs from "West River" in all other colors. The Black Hills are the oval on the left. Courtesy of the USGS.

It makes sense to me how the ice sheet covered the eastern and northern parts of the Dakotas, given that the north is colder and the east is generally wetter, allowing more opportunities for snow to fall and add to the ice. I don't doubt that the ice sheet never made it to the Black Hills, but what I'm really wondering about is the absence of alpine glaciers in the Black Hills.

Average annual precipitation in the United States. You can see the Black Hills as a small spot on the SD-WY border with as much precipitation as Minnesota. Courtesy of the NOAA.

This is part of a map showing average annual temperature in the United States. The Black Hills once again stand out as a blue spot on the SD-WY border. Bluer means colder. Courtesy of the NOAA.

The Black Hills always have been colder, on average, than the rest of the Dakotas. Even in recent times, it is not unheard of for freezing temperatures to happen in July in the northern, higher elevations of the Black Hills around Lead and Deadwood. The Black Hills is also the only area in South Dakota that gets an average of over 72 inches of snow per year. When so much snow falls in an area that is as cold as the Black Hills, there tends to be evidence of Pleistocene glaciers. If we look at Humphreys Peak in Arizona, that has about the same climate as the northern Black Hills. There is evidence of glaciers there, and the Navajo people of the area have historically called it "the mountain that never melts". If these mountains had glaciers late enough for the Navajo to give Humphreys Peak its native name, perhaps during the "Little Ice Age" from roughly 1300 to 1850, why not the Black Hills? Or did the Black Hills in fact have glaciers in that time? I seem to recall reading that the Lakota people informed Lewis and Clark that the tops of the Black Hills had snow year-round, though I don't remember where I read that.

Apart from comparisons, we also have evidence of animals in the Black Hills that are found only in subarctic or tundra climates. At Wind Cave National Park, there is a site called Persistence Cave which has yielded bones from those kinds of animals, particularly pikas and pine martens. In fact, the webpage I read that information from concludes that "The environment represented at Persistence Cave is more similar to that of Rocky Mountain or Glacier National Park than it is to Wind Cave National Park today." Those parks have glaciers now, and if Wind Cave in the Black Hills had those animals, it should make sense for the Black Hills to have gone through some years with permanent snow, if not true glaciers.

There is also the reasonable assumption that the Black Hills were higher than they are now. On page 214 of Roadside Geology of South Dakota, geologist John Paul Gries says that the Black Hills started rising about 62 million years ago and finished by about 48 million years ago. Much of the rock in the Black Hills eroded away, which is what revealed the older rock formations. Also, much of this sediment has been traced from the plains east of the Black Hills to the parts of the Black Hills it came from. The question is, how much higher was the Black Hills during the Pleistocene? That would be interesting to answer as well.

I still don't have an answer for why there is no evidence of Pleistocene alpine glaciers in the Black Hills, but I still think it's likely that the Black Hills had glaciers at some point. Maybe we just haven't found the evidence yet, or maybe it has all been lost to erosion somehow. Perhaps, at some point in the future, a geologist will support my argument or provide good reasons and explanations against it.

Did Russia Colonize Oregon in the 1790s?

If anyone has any knowledge of the Russian colonization of North America, they at least know that the Russians settled in Alaska and that the United States purchased Alaska from Russia in 1867. If you're a history buff, you might even know when and where Russia settled. However, if you look at any map or timeline of Russian settlements in North America, none of them will show any Russian settlements south of Alaska before 1800. However, there appears to be evidence that the Russians quietly settled in Oregon years before Lewis and Clark got there.

This is another historical rabbit hole I went down. The year after I was trying to figure out who "Little Beaver" was, I was reading about the expedition of John Evans, who reached the Mandan people by way of St. Louis to remind British traders up there that they were in Spanish territory. That was in 1796, eight years before Spain gave Louisiana Territory back to France who promptly gave it to the United States (at least, from the St. Louis perspective, where nobody knew about those events until March 1804). Anyway, John Evans was instructed by the explorer James Mackay to go up the Missouri River to its source, cross the Rocky Mountains, and find the nearest river to follow to the West Coast. That was literally what the Lewis and Clark expedition did after Evans' failure to achieve that goal in full. What is unusual, however, is that Mackay expected that Evans would find at least one Russian settlement when he arrived at the ocean. Mackay was not the only person on the Spanish side who spoke of Russian settlements between Alaska and California. The Baron de Carondelet, Spanish governor of Louisiana at the time, advised that whoever could reach the West Coast by way of St. Louis should not only contact the Russians but have them confirm by writing in the Russian language that the explorer had reached those settlements. 

I highly doubt that Mackay or Carondelet were referring to the Russian settlements of Alaska. That was a far sailing journey from where a hypothetical west-flowing river would be across from the Missouri River, and there were a few Spanish explorers who had seen the Russian settlements of Alaska as far as the Aleutian Islands, so I would think that the Spanish had good knowledge of where the Russian coastal settlements were. Yet, none of those explorers reported any Russians in what is now Oregon. John Evans, meanwhile, trusted Mackay's words so much that on one of his maps, depicting what he supposed lay beyond the Mandan villages, there is a fort shown on the West Coast at about the same latitude as the Mandan villages.

A representation of John Evans' map as seen in W. Raymond Wood's book, Prologue to Lewis & Clark: The Mackay and Evans Expedition. The presumptive Russian fort is on the far-left side of the map.

After James Mackay said that "There is ... a Russian Settlement that they say is to the north of California", he also said that "there is reason to believe that it is not the only one and that the nations of the interior of the continent ought to have knowledge of it". That last part is interesting, because in the book, The Way to the Western Sea, the author mentions that when the Lewis and Clark Expedition conversed with the Shoshone chief Cameahwait in the Rocky Mountains, the chief told them that there were light-skinned men like themselves living near the mouth of the rivers the expedition would row down. On the other hand, the Lewis and Clark expedition never saw any Russians, Englishmen, Spaniards, or any other men "like themselves" when they were in today's Washington and Oregon. How do we solve these paradoxical facts?

One day, as I was looking for any clues in my research, I decided to see what the oldest buildings are in each state. I doubted that any would point me to an answer, but it turns out that the oldest building in Oregon is a mysterious cabin called the Molalla Log House. There are no historical records mentioning the building's construction, nor are there any historical records that assert who built it. However, architectural archaeologists and historians have studied the physical details of the log cabin and concluded that it is likely Russian in origin and was constructed in the 1790s! Here's a link to their 2015 report. The log house was constructed miles away from the Columbia River, where the Lewis and Clark Expedition would have been, and the area is heavily forested. That would explain why Lewis and Clark never found the settlement.

Therefore, my concluding hypothesis is as follows. Mackay's "Russian Settlement" was a small group of Russian colonists who had ventured up the Columbia River and its tributaries in the 1790s. It is plausible that Russians traveled to that location by way of Alaska, were seen and maybe questioned by Spanish sailors near the Columbia River estuary (since the Spanish were regularly commuting between California and Vancouver Island at the time), and then word came to Carondelet by word of those sailors and maybe some other Spanish third parties. Carondelet could have then informed James Mackay of the Russians there for his and Evans’ information. The settlement would have been known to most tribes living in the Oregon Country including the Shoshones, who told Lewis and Clark about them. However, Lewis and Clark would not have seen the settlement since it was not in the Columbia River valley itself. The Russian settlement must have been abandoned or ruined sometime between 1805 and 1840 as American settlement of Oregon began.

Solving a Mystery from a Lakota Winter Count

Pre-Columbian, colonial, and territorial history of the central region of North America is underrated. While it is true that North Dakota and surrounding areas have a written history only dating back to the 17th or 18th century, the tribal winter counts, mostly used by the Lakota people but also others, provide details about this history that are often very intriguing to Lakota and non-Lakota readers alike.

Winter counts are not written records in the sense that they are not made of words from writing, but they are very helpful guides for understanding the history of a region or tribe. If you don't know, a winter count is a series of images traditionally drawn on a bison hide that record a significant event that happened each "winter", as in the time from first snowfall to the next first snowfall, which I suppose is often from one October to the next October. There is a book called The Year the Stars Fell that has the images and corresponding captions from several Lakota winter counts. I wish I had that book right now, but from what I remember, the whole 19th century is well covered and most or all of the 18th century is well covered too. Many of the winters in the counts describe a significant battle, epidemic, feast, or famine, which are usually about a sub-tribe or band of Lakota (obviously) or their neighbors. Other winters are recognizable events from broader history, such as the intense meteor shower in 1833 or Custer's demise in 1876. As winters go into the 19th century, there are more mentions of wasichus (often translated as "white people" but also includes any other newcomers to North America). As a wasichu myself, some of the winter counts have figures I recognize, but some wasichus have a mysterious identity and you would think they would be included in local history books, but they aren't (for the most part).

One of the mysterious figures in the Lakota winter counts is called Little Beaver. He shows up in a few winters, mostly in connection to his trading post that blew up and, according to some, took his life in the process. This prompted me to go down a historical rabbit hole in the summer of 2023. Who was this person, and which trading post was this that blew up?

Winter count by The Flame, created 1877. The winter when Little Beaver's trading post burned down is number 24.

First, I started looking for which year the explosion might have happened. I noticed that there can be some discrepancy in the order of winters between some winter counts; some winter counts matched the explosion of Little Beaver's trading post to as early as 1808 and as late as 1811. Nonetheless, I started deep-diving in South Dakota histories of the fur trade and colonial times. Fur traders generally set up shop on the Missouri River, but which trading post was it?

I started looking also for any forts which were said to have burned down. That was key. I had no luck until I saw on a Wikipedia article about the history of South Dakota that there was a post called Fort aux Cedres which burned down in 1810. That was a great clue! Now I just had to figure out whose fort it was.

The answer to the identity of the man who set up Fort aux Cedres was actually found in the journals of Lewis and Clark. That expedition passed the fort on the way up the Missouri, and by then it was already abandoned but not burnt. This is what William Clark said about it (in his usual bad spelling) on September 22, 1804: "Near the upper part of this Island on its S. Side a Tradeing fort is Situated built of Cedar—by a Mr. Louiselle of St Louis, for the purpose of Tradeing with the Teton Bands of Soues (or “Sieux”) about this Fort I saw numbers of Indians Temporary Lodges, & horse Stables, all of them round and to a point at top".

Historians recognize the name "Louiselle" to refer to Regis Loisel, an ethnically French fur trader during the Spanish regime in the Louisiana Territory. He was one of the few fur traders of the time that dared trade with the Lakotas, who had a bad reputation at the time. So was Regis Loisel the man identified as Little Beaver among the Lakotas? Some Lakota historians have mentioned that Little Beaver "was well liked and his post flourished" (Pekka Hamalainen, Lakota America, p. 150). If Regis Loisel was the man who ran the post, surely he was Little Beaver. Further verification came for me when I saw an interpretive sign marking the location of Fort aux Cedres (on an image on Google Maps - I haven't actually been there yet) which says that "Loisel was called Little Beaver by the Indians".

There is, however, one detail that is confusing. Most winter counts describing the explosion of Little Beaver's trading post say that he died in the explosion. Regis Loisel, however, died in late 1804, not 1810 when the trading post exploded. It could be that Little Beaver was an employee of Loisel who worked at the trading post, but I haven't found any records of Loisel having any employees, and it would seem strange for Little Beaver to be mentioned and not his hypothetical employer. Maybe Loisel died and later generations of Lakotas conflated his death and the destruction of the trading post into the same event? Who knows, but I am satisfied with declaring that Little Beaver was in fact Regis Loisel, a fur trader apparently more significant to Lakota history than American history.

An Astronomy-Related Pet Peeve

In August 2006, the International Astronomical Union, the authoritative source for astronomical names and definitions, defined the word "planet" in a way that excluded Pluto. A lot of people who were not astronomers disagreed. After all this time, I still hear many non-astronomers call Pluto a planet. The exclusion of Pluto as a planet happened so long ago now that a senior in high school will not remember that news, yet a lot of people still seem to be living in 2005.

Don't get me wrong, Pluto is a fascinating world. I was one of those eagerly awaiting pictures from the spacecraft New Horizons in 2015. I've even visited the observatory where it was discovered and touched the telescope Clyde Tombaugh looked through when he found it. But just because Pluto was your favorite of the then 9 planets growing up does not entitle you to say whether it is a planet.

The telescope that Clyde Tombaugh used when he discovered Pluto in 1930.

Do those who still call Pluto a planet even know the context of why it is not? Thousands of years ago, a planet was merely a "wandering star" that did not stay in one place like other stars (in fact, we get the word "planet" from a Greek word meaning "wanderer".) The Sun and Moon also do not stay in one place in the sky. For that reason, there were seven "planets" in ancient times: Moon, Mercury, Venus, Sun, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. However, after Copernicus realized that it is the Earth that orbits the Sun and not the Sun that orbits the Earth (and after a few centuries of heated debate on this), astronomers had to rethink what a planet is. The "wandering star" part was basically the same, but the Earth and the Sun had to switch. It was still obvious that the Moon orbits Earth, though, so the Moon was not a planet. Therefore, there were now six planets: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn.

Fast-forwarding to the 18th century, astronomers now had telescopes, and a new planet was discovered: Uranus. Neptune was discovered in the 1840s, but before that, astronomers discovered Ceres. Then, a BUNCH of other "planets" between Mars and Jupiter. That's right: MANY objects used to be "planets", not just Pluto! What happened to Ceres and friends? They all got grouped as the new category of asteroids in 1867. And people whine about one object being demoted to dwarf planet.

The asteroids were demoted from being planets because they are all in the same region of the Solar System and they are all much smaller than all the planets recognized so far. Fast forward to 1930, and Pluto is discovered. Pluto was called a planet because it was thought to be even larger than Earth at first, and it was the only object of that size past the orbit of Neptune. Pluto was considered a planet for decades because of that second reason even as its size estimates were reduced to the point that it was considered the smallest planet. However, Pluto was already off from the beginning. Its orbit at times overlaps Neptune's, and its orbit is also at an odd angle compared to those of the planets.

In 2005, Eris was discovered, which was the largest of a new batch of objects found beyond Neptune. Many had so far been considered much smaller than Pluto, but Eris' size rivals or exceeds Pluto's. Fittingly, Eris got its name from a Greco-Roman goddess of discord, and discord between astronomers and the public is exactly what happened as a result, for the discovery of Eris was what really sparked the convention to define a planet in 2006. Just like with Ceres, Pluto was thought to be a planet until astronomers found a bunch of other relatively similar objects in the same region of the Solar System. Therefore, the IAU's final definition of planet was, and has been, "a celestial body that (a) is in orbit around the Sun, (b) has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round) shape, and (c) has cleared the neighbourhood around its orbit." "Exoplanets" are those that orbit other stars. Unless you'd like to call the Sun, the Moon, Ceres, Pallas, Vesta, etc. planets, please don't call Pluto a planet like it's still the early 2000s. You'd also look foolish in presuming to know more about astronomy than astronomers.

Traverse Gap: A Missed Opportunity?

There is a spot on the Minnesota-South Dakota border where water that flows to opposite shores of North America almost meet. Historically, during times of severe flooding, they actually did. Lake Traverse, on the north side of this spot, is a source of water that flows all the way to the coast in northern Manitoba, where York Factory stood. The Little Minnesota River and Big Stone Lake, on the south side, is a source of water that flows all the way to the coast in southern Louisiana. Less than a mile separates Lake Traverse from the Little Minnesota River, and the distance is even within a valley, not a "height of land" that forms most continental divides.

The Traverse Gap almost connects the Red River (forming the MN-ND border) and the Minnesota River (going from the MN-SD border to the Mississippi River).

Anyone who knows about the Suez Canal, Panama Canal, or even the Chicago and Illinois Canal understands the importance of shortcuts for international shipping. Why, then, was there never a canal built in such an inviting place as the Traverse Gap, which would theoretically make an all-water route between York Factory and New Orleans possible? This was the question that bugged me a couple of years ago.

To make a long story short, the Red River and most of the Minnesota River is not navigable, meaning neither of those rivers are deep and wide enough for ships to sail on. The Minnesota River is navigable for only the lowest part, located entirely within the Twin Cities metropolitan area. As for the Red River, it is not navigable for any part of it within the United States. Canal diggers would not only have to cut through the Traverse Gap; they would also have to dredge and widen hundreds of miles' worth of rivers.

There has historically been another use for crossing continental divides: the fur trade. Back when the fur trade was important to colonial and early American economies, voyageurs would canoe along rivers and lakes to get to destinations thousands of miles apart. Everyone in the fur trade had to know where rivers went and what the shortest distances between different watersheds were. Since they mostly used canoes, many more rivers were navigable to them. Why didn't the fur trade take advantage of the Traverse Gap?

To make a long story short again, voyageurs were content with portaging. Instead of digging canals to row their canoes through, voyageurs simply picked up their canoes and carried them along until they got to the next river. A few miles of portaging was not a problem. There used to be a canoeing route connecting Lake of the Woods to Lake Superior (most of which is actually the Minnesota-Ontario border today). This, too, went across a continental divide, making it possible to travel from Quebec City to York Factory. (Maybe not as impressive as York Factory to New Orleans, but still very far). The portage across that particular divide was even shorter than the Traverse Gap, but there was a much larger portage, the Grand Portage, bypassing a large waterfall before Lake Superior. The Grand Portage is nine times longer than the Traverse Gap. Since no canal was dug for the Grand Portage, voyageurs would have been fine portaging across the Traverse Gap. There were other crossings of continental divides as well which fur traders seemed more interested in using. In North Dakota alone, some would go dozens of miles from the Mouse/Souris River to the Missouri River (roughly from Velva, ND to Stanton, ND). Just after 1800, one fur trader pointed out the portage one could make from the Sheyenne River to the James River, which he thought was just "half a league" but is really 10 kilometers, or 6 miles.

Actually, there is in fact a canal crossing the north-south continental divide in North America, but it connects two rivers that are unnavigable at those points: the Missouri River and the Sheyenne River. I speak of the McClusky Canal, which was built not for commerce but for irrigation. Nonetheless, I challenge any very adventurous and experienced canoeists to row from York Factory to the mouth of the Mississippi River, using the McClusky Canal to cross the continental divide. Better yet, go all the way back, like a voyageur or any river explorer would have done.