Portland sits on a catastrophic flood deposit. When the Ice Age megafloods hit the Columbia River Gorge, the water encountered a major obstruction west of the city and split in two directions. One flow surged south, backfilling the Willamette Valley 400 feet deep. The other turned north toward Astoria and emptied into the Pacific. At the turn, the current dropped its heaviest load: a massive boulder bar. That's what Portland is built on. Builders working in the area confirm it. Dig down for a foundation and you hit enormous boulders buried just below the surface, erratic stones carried hundreds of miles by floodwater moving faster than any river on Earth today. The city's bedrock isn't bedrock at all. It's the debris field of a cataclysm.