by CR Munson (February 16 2013)
This was a great site! Where else can you find agates, petrified wood, chalcedony, paint pots, jasper, miniature hoodoos and amazing conglomerates all in one place?
As CCGMS trip leader, Chris Munson so aptly said “it looked like someone had backed up a truck and dumped thousands of rough cabs over multiple acres of land just before our trip. To top that, the stones looked as if they were cabbed by nature and only needed a polishing step to get them ready for jewelry.
The 16th was a bit chilly and windy, but our CCGMS members received a warm welcome from the ALMS Trip Leader Don Hill and President, Reggie Bolton and Field Trip Coordinator, Bunny Bolton. They showed us polished agates and chalcedony from the site and specimens of petrified wood and conglomerate. We caravanned to the site which provided acres of agates and chalcedony everywhere! The colors varied from pinks, oranges, reds, grayish blues and yellows to clear and white. Everywhere you looked there were materials to be collected and beautiful scenery to see.
We found some hollow concretions filled with red powder and learned from Don Hill that they were “paint pots” used by Native Americans as ceremonial face paint. Geologically they are concretions that formed around iron that has disintegrated. The red hematite powder made a face paint that the Native Americans believed made them invincible in battle and on hunts.
The beautiful stones we found are eroding out of a one foot, thick layer of pebble conglomerate that was an ancient stream deposit. The conglomerate and surrounding coarse sands lie directly on the Brookwood coal seam within the Pottsville Formation. In Pennsylvanian time (nearly 300 million years ago) as the Appalachian Mountains were rising, gravel and sands were washed into this area. At the same time, the South Pole ice cap was experiencing cycles of melting resulting in fluctuating rises and falls in sea level. The two opposing effects met in the Brookwood area. The Pottsville Formation shows at least a dozen cycles of rising above sea level followed by sinking back down into a marine environment. The pebbles and sand were deposited during one of the periods of rising land.
Even though we collected buckets of materials, there are plenty left. For all of you who missed the trip and would like to collect there, AMLC will be hosting a DMC trip to the site in February 2014. Ya’ll mark your calendar, I know we Have!
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