Elephant Rocks State Park | |
---|---|
Location | Iron County, Missouri, United States |
Coordinates | 37°39′16″N90°41′17″W / 37.65444°N 90.68806°W [1] |
Area | 133.75 acres (54.13 ha) [2] |
Elevation | 1,273 ft (388 m) [1] |
Established | 1967 [3] |
Governing body | Missouri Department of Natural Resources |
Website | Elephant Rocks State Park |
Elephant Rocks State Park is a state-owned geologic reserve and public recreation area encompassing an outcropping of Precambrian granite in the Saint Francois Mountains in the U.S. state of Missouri. The state park is named for a string of large granite boulders which resemble a train of pink circus elephants. [4] The park was created following the donation of the land to the state in 1967 by geologist Dr. John Stafford Brown. [5] The park is used for picnicking, rock climbing, and trail exploration. It is managed by the Missouri Department of Natural Resources. [4]
The Elephant Rocks, for which Elephant Rocks State Park is named, is a pile of residual boulders of weathered Graniteville Granite. It is a medium- to coarse-grained, muscovite-biotite alkali granite that, on the average, consists of 55 percent alkali feldspar, 40 percent quartz, and less than 5 percent mafic minerals. The Graniteville Granite is a pluton formed 1.4 billion years ago in the Proterozoic by the cooling of magma that intruded into the volcanic strata and country rock associated with a collapsed caldera. [6] [7] Nearly vertical fractures formed in the stone as it cooled, and uplift of the granite enhanced the fracturing. Eventually the overlying strata were removed through erosion, exposing the granite pluton. Before it was exposed, groundwater weathered the granite along fracture joints creating corestones of relatively solid altered granite embedded within friable saprolite. Surface runoff later eroded the saprolite that once surrounded the corestones and left, what are now locally called elephant rocks as boulders perched on the ground surface. [6]
The reddish or pink granite has been quarried in this area since 1869, and two abandoned granite quarries are within the park. These and others nearby have provided red architectural granite for buildings in states from Massachusetts to California, but most particularly in St. Louis, including stone for St. Louis City Hall and the piers of the Eads Bridge. Stones unsuitable for architectural use were made into shoebox-sized paving stones that were used on the streets of St. Louis as well as on its wharf on the Mississippi River. Stone quarried in the area currently is used for mortuary monuments and is known commercially as Missouri Red monument stone. [6] [8]
A one-mile (2 km) circular interpretive trail in the Elephant Rocks Natural Area, called the Braille Trail, is the first in Missouri state parks designed specifically for visitors with visual and physical challenges. Spur trails off the main trail include one passing through "Fat Man's Squeeze," a narrow gap between two boulders that leads hikers to an abandoned quarry, and another that goes through "The Maze," a 100-foot (30.48 meter) section of scattered boulders. [9] The park's picnicking area includes ADA-compliant facilities. [10]
Granite is a coarse-grained (phaneritic) intrusive igneous rock composed mostly of quartz, alkali feldspar, and plagioclase. It forms from magma with a high content of silica and alkali metal oxides that slowly cools and solidifies underground. It is common in the continental crust of Earth, where it is found in igneous intrusions. These range in size from dikes only a few centimeters across to batholiths exposed over hundreds of square kilometers.
Cape Breton Highlands National Park is a Canadian national park on northern Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia. The park was the first national park in the Atlantic provinces of Canada and covers an area of 948 square kilometres (366 sq mi). It is one of 42 in Canada's system of national parks.
The Llano Uplift is a geologically ancient, low geologic dome that is about 90 miles (140 km) in diameter and located mostly in Llano, Mason, San Saba, Gillespie, and Blanco counties, Texas. It consists of an island-like exposure of Precambrian igneous and metamorphic rocks surrounded by outcrops of Paleozoic and Cretaceous sedimentary strata. At their widest, the exposed Precambrian rocks extend about 65 miles (105 km) westward from the valley of the Colorado River and beneath a broad, gentle topographic basin drained by the Llano River. The subdued topographic basin is underlain by Precambrian rocks and bordered by a discontinuous rim of flat-topped hills. These hills are the dissected edge of the Edwards Plateau, which consist of overlying Cretaceous sedimentary strata. Within this basin and along its margin are down-faulted blocks and erosional remnants of Paleozoic strata which form prominent hills.
Spheroidal weathering is a form of chemical weathering that affects jointed bedrock and results in the formation of concentric or spherical layers of highly decayed rock within weathered bedrock that is known as saprolite. When saprolite is exposed by physical erosion, these concentric layers peel (spall) off as concentric shells much like the layers of a peeled onion. Within saprolite, spheroidal weathering often creates rounded boulders, known as corestones or woolsack, of relatively unweathered rock. Spheroidal weathering is also called onion skin weathering,concentric weathering,spherical weathering, or woolsack weathering.
The St. Francois Mountains in southeast Missouri are a mountain range of Precambrian igneous mountains rising over the Ozark Plateau. This range is one of the oldest exposures of igneous rock in North America. The name of the range is spelled out as Saint Francois Mountains in official GNIS sources, but it is sometimes misspelled in use as St. Francis Mountains to match the anglicized pronunciation of both the range and St. Francois County.
The City of Rocks National Reserve, also known as the Silent City of Rocks, is a United States National Reserve and state park in south-central Idaho, approximately 2 miles (3.2 km) north of the border with Utah. It is widely known for its enormous granite rock formations and excellent rock climbing.
Quartz monzonite is an intrusive, felsic, igneous rock that has an approximately equal proportion of orthoclase and plagioclase feldspars. It is typically a light colored phaneritic (coarse-grained) to porphyritic granitic rock. The plagioclase is typically intermediate to sodic in composition, andesine to oligoclase. Quartz is present in significant amounts. Biotite and/or hornblende constitute the dark minerals. Because of its coloring, it is often confused with granite, but whereas granite contains more than 20% quartz, quartz monzonite is only 5–20% quartz. Rock with less than five percent quartz is classified as monzonite. A rock with more alkali feldspar is a syenite whereas one with more plagioclase is a quartz diorite. The fine grained volcanic rock equivalent of quartz monzonite is quartz latite.
The Wichita Mountains are located in the southwestern portion of the U.S. state of Oklahoma. It is the principal relief system in the Southern Oklahoma Aulacogen, being the result of a failed continental rift. The mountains are a northwest-southeast trending series of rocky promontories, many capped by 500 million-year old granite. These were exposed and rounded by weathering during the Pennsylvanian & Permian Periods. The eastern end of the mountains offers 1,000 feet (305 m) of topographic relief in a region otherwise dominated by gently rolling grasslands.
An outcrop or rocky outcrop is a visible exposure of bedrock or ancient superficial deposits on the surface of the Earth.
Banning State Park is a state park of Minnesota, USA, stretched along 10 miles (16 km) of the Kettle River near Sandstone in Pine County. The centerpiece of the park is 1.5 miles (2.4 km) of churning rapids, some up to Class IV. The daring kayakers and canoeists who shoot Blueberry Slide, Mother's Delight, Dragon's Tooth, Little Banning, and Hell's Gate each spring attract spectators to the park. Landbound visitors can hike along the state's first Wild and Scenic River amid dramatic sandstone rock formations, large potholes carved by the river, and the remains of an historic quarry. Other features are Wolf Creek Falls and Robinson Ice Cave. The park is located directly off Interstate 35. Banning State Park is open daily from 8am until 10pm. Each vehicle entering the park requires an up to date permit which can be purchased online or at the park office.
Hickory Run State Park is a 15,990-acre (6,471 ha) Pennsylvania state park in Kidder and Penn Forest Townships in Carbon County, Pennsylvania in the United States. The park is spread across the Pocono Mountains. The park is easily accessible from Interstate 476 and Interstate 80.
The Baraboo Range is a syncline located in Columbia and Sauk Counties, Wisconsin. It consists of highly eroded Precambrian metamorphic rock. It is about 25 miles (40 km) long and varies from 5 to 10 miles (16 km) in width. The Wisconsin River, previously traveling in a north to south direction, turns to the east just north of the range before making its turn to the west towards the Upper Mississippi River. The eastern end of the range was glaciated during the Wisconsinian glaciation, while the western half was not, and consequently, marks the eastern boundary of Wisconsin's Driftless Area.
The Granite Dells is a geological feature north of Prescott, Arizona. The Dells consist of exposed bedrock and large boulders of granite that have eroded into an unusual lumpy, rippled appearance. Watson Lake and Willow Lake are small man-made reservoirs in this formation.
Hughes Mountain and the Hughes Mountain State Natural Area are located in southern Washington County, Missouri just south of the Big River and Highway M on Cedar Creek Road in the St. Francois Mountains range of The Ozarks. The mountain reaches an elevation of just over 1,200 feet, rising 430 feet above the Big River. The Hughes Mountain Natural Area of the Missouri Department of Conservation encompasses 462 acres (1.87 km2) of the mountain, including the rhyolite glade at its top.
Cape Town lies at the south-western corner of the continent of Africa. It is bounded to the south and west by the Atlantic Ocean, and to the north and east by various other municipalities in the Western Cape province of South Africa.
The Vishnu Basement Rocks is the name recommended for all Early Proterozoic crystalline rocks exposed in the Grand Canyon region. They form the crystalline basement rocks that underlie the Bass Limestone of the Unkar Group of the Grand Canyon Supergroup and the Tapeats Sandstone of the Tonto Group. These basement rocks have also been called either the Vishnu Complex or Vishnu Metamorphic Complex. These Early Proterozoic crystalline rocks consist of metamorphic rocks that are collectively known as the Granite Gorge Metamorphic Suite; sections of the Vishnu Basement Rocks contain Early Paleoproterozoic granite, granitic pegmatite, aplite, and granodiorite that have intruded these metamorphic rocks, and also, intrusive Early Paleoproterozoic ultramafic rocks.
Graniteville is an unincorporated community in northeast Iron County, in the U.S. state of Missouri. The community is located on Missouri Route 21 approximately three-quarters of a mile east of Elephant Rocks State Park. Pilot Knob is about three miles to the southeast.
The geology of Eswatini formed beginning 3.6 billion years ago, in the Archean Eon of the Precambrian. Eswatini is the only country entirely underlain by the Kaapvaal Craton, one of the oldest pieces of stable continental crust and the only craton regarded as "pristine" by geologists, other than the Yilgarn Craton in Australia. As such, the country has very ancient granite, gneiss and in some cases sedimentary rocks from the Archean into the Proterozoic, overlain by sedimentary rocks and igneous rocks formed during the last 539 million years of the Phanerozoic as part of the Karoo Supergroup. Intensive weathering has created thick zones of saprolite and heavily weathered soils.
The geology of Montana includes thick sequences of Paleozoic, Mesozoic and Cenozoic sedimentary rocks overlying ancient Archean and Proterozoic crystalline basement rock. Eastern Montana has considerable oil and gas resources, while the uplifted Rocky Mountains in the west, which resulted from the Laramide orogeny and other tectonic events have locations with metal ore.
The geology of national parks in Britain strongly influences the landscape character of each of the fifteen such areas which have been designated. There are ten national parks in England, three in Wales and two in Scotland. Ten of these were established in England and Wales in the 1950s under the provisions of the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act 1949. With one exception, all of these first ten, together with the two Scottish parks were centred on upland or coastal areas formed from Palaeozoic rocks. The exception is the North York Moors National Park which is formed from sedimentary rocks of Jurassic age.