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Creekside Loop Trailhead
The Sandberg-Leiberg Expedition
In mid-April of 1893, naturalist John Bernard Leiberg agreed to participate in a botanical survey of the Great Columbia Plain for the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Headed by Dr. John Sandberg of Minneapolis, the expedition was tasked with making plant collections from Spokane to Stevens Pass, determining the boundaries of the treeless area inside the Columbia’s Big Bend, investigating the success of farmers and ranchers in the sagebrush country, and exploring alpine habitats on at least one volcanic peak of the Cascade Range.
John B. Leiberg, 1891
Courtesy New York Botanical Society
Leiberg, a Swedish-born prospector and plant enthusiast who had homesteaded at the south end of Lake Pend Oreille, immediately began assembling a kit that included a farm wagon, horses, plant preserving materials, and food supplies. Because Dr. Sandberg suffered from a bad leg, John Leiberg took care of most of the camp chores and floral collecting. He also kept a detailed journal of the expedition’s progress that listed each day’s camping conditions and notable plants, salted with personal observations and conversations with local people.
Map by Joe Guarisco
River ferry with farm wagon, ca 1890
Photographer unknown
He pondered the layers of fine clay between basalt outcrops: “The bluffs are in the main made up of stratified gravel and miceaceous clays and sand. Basaltic outflows are visible in the bluffs at frequent intervals.”
Exploring Along the Creek
Along Hangman Creek, Leiberg noted a number of abandoned sawmills, leading him to speculate on the density and size of the ponderosa pine forest there before settlers arrived. He spent time documenting the variety of native bunchgrasses that thrived beneath the remaining trees along the steep bluffs.
Photo by Jack Nisbet
Leiberg's Research
Leiberg spent most of his time collecting the constituents of a healthy ponderosa pine regime. His list included arrowleaf balsamroot, wild hyacinth, large-flowered collomia, several different biscuitroots, velvety lupines, and penstemons galore. “Many species appear to be very localized, and a short excursion in any direction from camp is sure to be rewarded by hew plants,” he wrote.
Large-flowered collomia
Photo by Jack Nisbet
Over the course of a week along Hangman Creek, Leiberg and Sandberg plucked three hundred or more specimens each day, then spent the evenings pressing and cataloguing their gleanings. When a rainy spell forced them inside their wall tent, they dried dozens of damp blotting papers in front of a fire. “Very slow ad tedious work,” wrote Leiberg. “It is a fact that my time was so fully occupied that only but barely could I snatch a few minutes to write to my wife.”
Drying specimen papers in a botanical camp
Photographer unknown
The records from the Sandberg-Leiberg expedition provide modern ecologists with baseline information about eastern Washington at the beginning of intensive settlement. A complete set of the their plant specimens resides in Washington State University’s Ownbey Herbarium, including this example of turpentine wavewing, which remains a strange but prominent member of the bluffs plant community today.
Cymopterus terebinthus