Soils and Geology of Wisconsin Field Trip, May 2010
Steven Dutch, Professor Emeritus, Natural and Applied Sciences, University of Wisconsin - Green Bay
May 17, 2010
The Langlade Lobe
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Loading up at UWGB |
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Heading off the Antigo Sand Plain and into the terminal moraine of the Langlade Lobe. |
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Trillium. |
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Investigating the soils. |
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An alfisol.
Below, Kevin Fermanich celebrates the virtues of the Wisconsin State Soil |
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Stirred, Not Shaken, at Bond Falls
Agate Falls
Palms Quartzite at Wakefield
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Left and below: Views of Wakefield |
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Vicar Iron Mine
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A chance to see iron formation in the field. |
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Let's see where this goes. |
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The plan was to investigate a steep gorge near the mine. We decided not to chance the bridge. |
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The gorge turns out to be flanked by volcanic rocks. |
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The volcanic rocks account for the steep hills on either side of the gorge. |
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There's always time for soil. |
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White vans and roads in the iron country don't mix. |
Archean Ramsay Greenstone
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Most of the Upper Peninsula is underlain by Archean basement. This outcrop east of Wakefield exposes pillow basalt. |
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A large pillow with alteration rind. |
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Atop the outcrop are excellent glacial striations. |
Lake Gogebic State Park
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Between Wakefield and Lake Gogebic State Park. |
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Camp cooking. |
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May 18, 2010
Lake Gogebic State Park
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Sunrise over Lake Gogebic |
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Breakfast |
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There's hard core, and then there's "work on your field notes before 8 A.M." hard core |
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View across Lake Gogebic. |
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Bergland Group
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Flow-banded rhyolite. |
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View across Lake Gogebic |
Bonanza Falls
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Bonanza Falls, just north of White Pine, might just offer the best illustrations of strike and dip anywhere.
Below: Views of the falls. |
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There are a few potholes here. This one still has tools in it. |
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Ripple marks. |
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Lake of the Clouds
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Epidote-filled amygdules. |
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Lunch at Union Bay
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Union Bay Campground was nearly empty so we had lunch here. |
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Large boulder of Copper Harbor Conglomerate. |
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Alvin? ALVIN? A-A-A-Alvin!! |
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Ripple Marks |
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Left: Great mud cracks
Below: |
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Ripple Marks |
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Cross beds |
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Inland and a Soil Stop
Jacobsville Sandstone at L'Anse
Canyon Falls
Ford Research Center
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Well, of course we brought a Frisbee. |
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Field trips where we set up for two nights are so convenient. |
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May 19, 2010
The Quincy Mine
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Breakfast |
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The Quincy Iron Mine now offers tours. |
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Left and below: the main mine building is made of Jacobsville Sandstone. |
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There are cores, and then there are cores. |
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Pneumatic drills |
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Ore car |
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A skip. These carried ore, other cargo, and miners up and down the shafts. |
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The old elevator building was one of the neatest looking buildings I've ever seen. Unfortunately it burned down almost 100 years ago. |
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Wooden brake shoes for stopping the drum. |
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Seaman Mineral Museum
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It is so much easier to find good minerals when they're neatly arranged in cabinets. The Seaman Mineral Museum at Michigan Tech in Houghton is the official mineral museum of Michigan. This is a huge pyrite crystal. |
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Malachite and azurite |
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Microcline (Amazonite) |
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Sulfur |
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Copper-cemented conglomerate |
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Dendritic silver |
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Gold |
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Lake Superior Agate |
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Fluorescent minerals from Franklin, New Jersey. |
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Stibnite (Antimony sulfide) has to be one of my favorite minerals. |
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Of course, gold has its appeal too. |
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Wire silver |
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Malachite |
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And pasties on the lawn for lunch. |
The Cliff Mine
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The Keweenaw Fault forms a line of steep cliffs. |
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We spent a couple of hours prowling the mine dumps. A number of people found small amounts of copper. |
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Metal detectors proved pretty much useless since so many rocks had small amounts of copper they constantly set off the detector. |
Eagle River Falls
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This aging truss bridge is now preserved as a historic landmark. |
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Eagle River Falls. The falls slides down a dip slope of Lakeshore Volcanics. A very rickety wooden dam blocks the original channel, exposing two spectacular potholes. The Copper Harbor Conglomerate laps onto the volcanics to the bottom of the lower pothole. |
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Copper Harbor Conglomerate beneath the bridge. |
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Copper Harbor Conglomerate beneath the bridge. |
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There was a trout traffic jam in the river. |
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The modern highway bridge is supported by a graceful wooden arch. |
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Copper Harbor Conglomerate beneath the bridge. |
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That small trickle has carved a narrow rill, probably mostly by chemical weathering when there's a trickle rather than mechanical erosion. |
Eagle Harbor Lighthouse
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A narrow band of Lakeshore Volcanics defines the shoreline near Eagle Harbor. |
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Calcite veins in the volcanics. |
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Left and below: views along the shore. |
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Colorful lichen. |
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The lighthouse. |
Esrey Park
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Esrey Park is another exposure of Lakeshore Volcanics. In the two views below, the distant point is conglomerate overlying the volcanics. |
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Brockway Mountain
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View of Copper Harbor |
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Highway U.S. 41 starts here. |
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In case you plan on driving the whole way. The other end is Alligator Alley north of the Everglades and Calle Ocho in Little Havana. |
Back to Camp
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This marker near Mohawk tells the story of the infamous lake effect snows of the Keweenaw Peninsula.
Below, left: The historic marker.
Below, right: The wayside. |
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This view of the Jacobsville outcrops at L'Anse shows the red color nicely. |
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It's so convenient to have camp all set up. |
May 20, 2010
In Search of Histosols
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Looks promising. |
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Very promising. |
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But it's not a histosol. Probably an inceptisol |
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So let's see what the upland soils look like. |
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Not one but two E horizons. We weren't totally sure what happened here, but there may have been several changes in soil formation history. |
Michigamme (Former) Mine
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The Michigamme Mine once had spectacular examples of retrograde-metamorphosed garnets as well as magnetite crystals in chlorite schist. It also had a lot of abandoned shafts. When the state widened the highway, they dumped waste rock over the mine, burying all the good stuff. There's a lot of rock here, none of it interesting. |
Champion Mine
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All that glitters is not gold. At the Champion Mine, it's hematite. |
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Republic Mine
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The Republic Iron Mine closed in 1981 but the overlook and historic markers are still there. |
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Boulder of banded iron formation |
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The mine is now filled with several hundred feet of water. |
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An overlook offers views of the mine and placards tell its history. |
Archean Gneiss and Dikes
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I'll just relax here until soil forms. |
Histosols at Last!
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Our well-trained crew tracks down a soils stop. |
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It's not a histosol unless the water table is in your shoe. |
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Created 22 May 2009 , Last Update 15 January 2020
