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INTERNATIONAL CROP CIRCLES OF 1999 |
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Walla Walla, Washington State, USA. Reported 1st week in July.
Updated Monday 30th May 2000
WALLA WALLA, WASHINGTON STATE: (formerly known as the Cottonwood Canyon formation)
Crop: Wheat
Location: Near Walla Walla, Washington State, Walla Walla county.
Discovery: About the first week in July by the farmer, Phil Reser. He came upon the pictogram and thought the indentations were from deer
making beds in the field. Three weeks later when harvesting he looked closer at them and found them to be precise patterns, swirled both
clockwise and anti-clockwise. He noticed no footprints nor access into the circles from the roads.
Reported By: Dar Addington to Ray Crowe to Carol Pedersen, CCCS/BLT on July 29th.
Dimensions: Overall, approximately 214" long.
Media: Front page article with two color photos, one an aerial, in the local newspaper, the Union Bulletin of July 27, 1999.
Field Research: Dar Addington obtained permission to enter the field after harvesting and made approximate measurements. The nodes on the
wheat in the middle were green. There were many bent nodes and plants were bent 2" from the ground. The adjoining field was a cut pea field.
Some of the circles appeared to resemble the "o's" of the cereal Cheerios. The ground was extremely hard. Dar dowsed the circles. Some
of the circles had bands of 4" or 5" flattened crop alternating clockwise and anti-clockwise. The centers resembled "cowlicks." The pattern
looked "laced" all over. The weather was hot, l03 degrees. Dar mentioned that even with the newspaper coverage there was not much local
interest in the formation. Ground photos were taken.
Special Effects: The formation appeared less than two miles below a microwave relay station placed up on a 3100 foot tall Pike's Peak hill.
Dar's two dogs, an Eskimo and a black lab, acted strangely on their visit to the formation. Usually these dogs play often and long in wheat fields
but on entering these circles, they sniffed around and then headed right back out, jumped into the truck and stayed there.
Sampling: Dar took some seeds but as there was no control plants available because the field had been harvested, it was not sampled for
the BLT.
By: Carol Pedersen, CCCS/BLT Oregon Representative
