Macauley Granite Gneiss at Bear Paw Road

Steven Dutch, Professor Emeritus, Natural and Applied Sciences, University of Wisconsin - Green Bay


SW 1/4, NE 1/4, Sec. 6, T31N R17E

Rocky knobs just off County Highway W expose the Macauley Granite Gneiss and smaller intrusions of metabasalt and pink aplite.


At this stop, head west into the woods and ascend over an extensive outcrop of the pink to grey Macauley granite gneiss. Locally, the rock is fractured and intruded. Also, the surface of the outcrop provides an excellent illustration of primary succession and the first stages of soil development. Note the two sets of joints, one along our line of sight and the other slanting from left to right.
A close-up of the gneiss. The gneiss probably started as a granite intrusion that was deformed and metamorphosed during the Penokean Orogeny, a collision of three plates about 1900 million years ago.
This area is also near the margins of the Wolf River Batholith and irregular masses of fine-grained pink granite intrude the gneiss.

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Created 16 June 1999, Last Update 12 January 2020