What Is the Palouse?

When Marty Solomon and I started The BEMA Podcast in 2016, we envisioned it primarily as a teaching tool for people in our local region, known as the Palouse. I lived an hour north of this region for a dozen years before moving to Moscow, Idaho, and I had not even heard the term.

Being one of our most frequently asked questions, it warrants an explanation.

The Palouse region of Washington and Idaho, pictured in orange.

The green portion of the map is the Palouse grasslands ecoregion according to the World Wide Fund for Nature, which you can read about on Wikipedia. The orange portion of the map is what we (and anyone local to our area) actually mean when we say “Palouse.” The southern bounds are made of the Clearwater River on the Idaho side and the Snake River on the Washington side. The eastern boundary is made of forests and mountains. Traveling west through the Columbia Plateau, you see the transition into scablands and loess. To the north, the land flattens into the plains of Spokane Valley.

But what does it look like? Here’s a sampling, and there’s more where that came from.

Canola (yellow) and wheat (green) in July.

Fields near Genesee turning green in June.

Juxtaposition of two crops near Genesee in June.

Fields near Viola after harvest in August.