Author: David B. Williams

National Park stone: Mt. Rainier

I recently spent a very sunny weekend up at Mt. Rainier. We stayed at the Paradise Inn. Built during 1916 and 1917, the historic lodge is on the national register of historic places. It is an A-shaped building, a shape necessary to withstand the average of over 600 inches of snow per year. From a geologic point of view, the most impressive features are the three massive fireplaces, two in the main lobby and one in the kitchen.

Fireplace in Paradise Inn at Mt. Rainier

Each fireplace is made of various sized rough blocks of what appears to be granodiorite from the Tatoosh pluton. The pluton ranges in age between 26 and 14 million years old. I could not, however, find any information about which rock was used. The stones reportedly came from a local quarry.

One feature that stands out on several blocks is the row of drill holes. They show how the quarrymen made blocks by drilling a line of several-inch deep holes and dropping in two metal shims, each of which was bent at the top so the shims wouldn’t disappear into the cavity. He would then drop a wedge of steel between the shims and pound the row of plugs until the rock split on the perforation.

Close up of Mr. Tarbox’s plug and feather quarrying method

Quarrymen call this the plug and feather method. It has used by stone masons for thousands of years though it has an interesting story in the US. According to quarry historians, a man named Mr. Tarbox introduced the method in this country in 1803. His work was noticed by a member of the commission to build a new jail in the Boston area, who tracked down Tarbox, hired him on spot, and got him to teach the method to other builders in the region. That knowledge spread quickly and soon the price of cut stone dropped appreciably.

The plug and feather method is still in use though it has been modified significantly with hydraulic air drills and hydraulic expanders. In places such as the Indiana limestone building district, quarrymen no longer need to swing a hammer.

Down lower on Mt. Rainier, at Longmire, another building makes use of the local stone, too. The visitor center is built of large boulders that must have been collected from the nearby river. The boulders are andesite, granodiorite, welded tuff, and rhyolite. Builders even used the boulders to make the chimney.

Longmire visitor center at Mt. Rainier

These buildings are two of many wonderful national park structures that use local rock, most often with rough cut faces or as boulders. Does anyone have any other favorite national park buildings with local materials?

Star Trek: The Big Cliff

Last weekend’s opening of the new Star Trek film generated much hoopla for geology fans. Or at least I like to think it did. Why? Because the opening sequence includes a spectacular shot of a Corvette plunging over a cliff and into a deep hole in the middle of Iowa. The cliff was obviously the wall of a quarry, as you can see the ledges where the stone was cut. But where?

The Cliff in Iowa

When the trailer for the film, which featured the Corvette shot, first appeared last year, many fans in the Trek universe were sent into a tizzy about the cliff. They knew that the driver of the car, a young James Kirk, will grow up in Iowa, but did not know of any such cliffs in Kirk’s home state. One wrote that because there aren’t any big cliffs like that in Iowa, the shot completely ruined the movie. I agree. If you are going to spend all of that money on a fictional, fantasy movie where people can use a transporter for travel, at least get the geology right. Others, however, contended that Kirk might have been on a road trip or that perhaps in the future someone would dig such a hole in Iowa.

The road trip idea fits in best with the filming. Consider that the scene is supposed to take place in Iowa was mostly shot outside of Bakersfield, California, and that the quarry is in Vermont.

The quarry hole that Mr. Kirk’s nice red Corvette shoots into is the E. L. Smith Quarry, started near Barre, Vermont, by Emery L. Smith, a Civil War veteran. After the war he returned to Barre, married, and started to acquire properties, eventually owing over 70 acres. Out of their quarries came the stone for the State House in Montpelier. The Rock of Ages corporation purchased the quarry in 1941 and still own it. The pit is now roughly 600 feet deep. The quarry produces a light gray granite, which formed during the Acadian Orogeny, sometime around 370 million years ago.

Rock of Ages Quarry, photo used courtesy of Peggy Perazzo, http://quarriesandbeyond.org/

According to press reports recently blasted out of Vermont, the crew came and shot the quarry without any actors in May 2008. They rented a helicopter and spent a day shooting aerial and still shots but wouldn’t say why or for what film. Using computer graphics apparently they then added the quarry face to the scenes shot in California. I guess with computers you don’t need a transporter.