You landed here for fast, accurate answers—and maybe a little context so they stick. Today’s quiz takes us to the Palouse, that ripple of velvet hills draped across the inland Northwest. Short version: wind did most of the sculpting, wheat and barley paint the seasons, and the region spills across three states.

Today’s Answers 🧠

What natural phenomenon primarily shaped the rolling hills of the Palouse region?
Answer: B. Windblown dust and fine silt
Loess—fine, ice-age silt carried by wind—settled in deep waves and got brushed smooth by time and farming. That’s the Palouse look.
Which crops predominantly change the landscape colors in the Palouse throughout the seasons?
Answer: C. Wheat and barley
Spring is neon green, midsummer goes gold, and post-harvest turns the palette to tawny browns.
The Palouse region stretches to the borders of which two states besides Washington?
Answer: B. Idaho and Oregon
Think: southeastern Washington, north-central Idaho, and a nibble of northeastern Oregon.

Why these answers are solid 📖

The Palouse isn’t a mountain range shaved down by rivers. It’s a loess landscape—wind-laid silt stacked into drifts that harden, erode gently, and hold moisture like a sponge. That’s why grains thrive.
Wheat and barley dominate the rotations: winter wheat, spring wheat, barley, with pulses in the mix depending on the field. They’re the reason photographers chase those color bands across the hills.
And geography? Draw a loose triangle: Pullman–Moscow as a hub, Lewiston–Clarkston to the south, and edges that brush Idaho and Oregon. If you’ve seen the view from Steptoe Butte at sunset, you know.

Memory hooks to ace similar questions 💡

“Loess = wind’s handwriting.” If you see smooth, wavelike hills with grain farms, bet on windblown silt.
“Palouse palette: green → gold → brown.” That’s wheat/barley seasonality in three strokes.
“WIO.” Washington–Idaho–Oregon. That’s your tri-state frame.

Quick Palouse facts you can drop in a tiebreaker 📖

The loess can be dozens to hundreds of feet deep in places—no bedrock surfacing like you see in basalt canyons.
Contour farming and no-till/strip-till practices are common; they keep the fragile silt from blowing or washing away.
Photographers flock to Steptoe Butte and Kamiak Butte for that layered, quilted horizon.

Extra credit: practice with more quizzes 🔍

Warm up with celebrity and pop-culture brain teasers here: today’s Entertainment Quiz answers.
Then test your current events radar with the daily News Quiz challenge.

FAQ (because these pop up) 📖

Is the Palouse the same as the Columbia Plateau?
Related, not identical. The Columbia Plateau is broader (lots of basalt); the Palouse is the loess-draped portion famous for grain.

Why not “erosion by rivers”?
Rivers carve valleys and coulees; they didn’t sculpt those soft, repeating swells. Wind-delivered silt did.

Could the crops be corn and soy like the Midwest?
Different climate, different soils, different tradition. Wheat and barley rule here.

Author

John Peters
John sees stories hiding in spreadsheets. An Accountancy grad, he once spent audit seasons chasing stray decimals and proofing every line. The spark behind that diligence? A teenage plan to earn stripes at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology—a dream that still pushes him to run lean, accurate, and forward-thinking. Each piece he publishes is sourced, sharp, and free of filler. When screens go dark, John teaches neighborhood teens how budgets beat guesswork and rebuilds vintage bikes—because good balance matters on books and wheels.