The biggest change for 2020 will be a our new venue—the Port Townsend High School auditorium.  The auditorium has theater seating for 270 and ample parking.  We’ll have all four winter/spring lectures there (see Upcoming Events).  We’ll continue our popular start time of 4 pm on Saturday.

Even though we don’t have membership dues, we appreciate the donations you give us at the door since they help us house, feed and transport speakers; the accumulation of extra funds is now letting us expand our outreach. Our advisors’ discussions this winter have focused on how to use these funds (slowly through time) to help facilitate earth-science education on the Quimper Peninsula.  Ideas range from sponsoring student field trips and/or buying classroom materials to scholarships for continuing education of science teachers.  We hope to develop a program this winter and initiate it in 2020, making sure the funds are spent in an efficient and meaningful way.  Stay tuned.

Use the website tab link to Events – 2019 for more details…

We held five talks in 2019, starting with Deb Kelley’s door-busting presentation on research at the Axial Seamount. Other topics included a technical discussion of ground-water dating and a personal retrospective of working at Mount St. Helens (1980-83). In June, we took a deep dive by inviting geologist and KCTS (Ch. 9) celebrity Nick Zentner to talk about his video series “Nick on the Rocks.”  Luckily, we anticipated a large crowd (275!) and had booked Chimacum High School’s Auditorium. As a result, we gained about 100 members, swelling the ranks further and signaling us to look for a larger venue. Finally, we finished the year of with Peter Ward’s wide-ranging discussion of the Coming (?) Great Simplification and possible future extinctions.

David Williams, a popular geology speaker of ours from Seattle, conducted two intriguing walking tours of downtown Seattle, focusing on architecture history, and the building materials used.  In the early summer, Jim Aldrich (a former advisor) led his second trip to Hurricane Ridge to speak about the history of the Olympic Mountains. Finally, Pat Pringle led a three-day circum-navigation of Mt. Rainier, focusing mainly on the debris-flows and eruptive history of this magnificent mountain.  We lucked out on the timing: the day after we left, the Sunrise Visitor’s Center (at 6,400 ft.) closed for the season and it snowed.

Quimper Geological Society

In the eight years we have been operating under the Jefferson Land Trust, our group has grown to more than 700 members. Last year we hosted 11 events and about 800 people at lectures and on field trips. We’ve outgrown several venues and occasionally need to use bigger ones, such as Chimacum High School. The upshot is that, with all the changes we’ve undergone, it seems like a good time to change our name; to one that reflects our size, relevance, and standing in the community. We’ll continue to do the same things that have made our group and our association with Jefferson Land Trust a valued resource on the Quimper Peninsula. Read on if you’d like to know more about the “Quimper” name and other geological societies.

(Information below summarized from Wikipedia)

The Quimper Peninsula forms the most northeastern extent of the Olympic Peninsula of Washington. Port Townsend sits at the north end of the peninsula. The peninsula is named after the Peruvian-born Spanish explorer Manuel Quimper who, in command of the Princesa Real, charted the north and south coasts of the Strait of Juan de Fuca during the summer of 1790. He was the first European to report seeing Mount Baker, which he named La Gran Montagna Carmelita. On the Olympic Peninsula he traded with and observed the customs of indigenous people near Dungeness (which he named Bahia de Quimper) and near the Elwha River. These people were most likely members of the S’Klallam tribe and Quimper may have been the first European they had seen. Most of his discoveries along the strait were renamed by British Captain George Vancouver, who entered the Strait of Juan de Fuca on 29 April 1792. Those features that retained at least a semblance of Quimper’s Spanish names include Port Angeles, Rosario Strait, Fidalgo Island, and Quimper Peninsula

Geological Societies. There are hundreds around the world, but here are some of significance to us:

• 1807 Geological Society of London (first established)
• 1888 Geological Society of America (first in USA)
• 1893 Geological Society of Washington (D.C.) (first local/regional)
• 1987 Northwest Geological Society (first in WA)
• 2019 Quimper Geological Society (formerly Jefferson Land Trust’s Geology Group)