Category: StreetSmartNaturalist

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.

Boston Rocks: The follow up

Several people have asked about my story in the Boston Globe last Sunday, May 3, 2009. The newspaper was kind enough to let me post the story on my web site. The paper’s graphics’s designer, Javier Zarracina, did a wonderful job of creating an easy-to-read, visual timeline of the buildings and the stones in Boston. I was particularly excited that he included a photo of my favorite Boston building stone fossil, a ten-inch wide ammonite found in the German limestone used on Hauser Hall at Harvard. To find the fossil, go to the north side of the building and look up; the fossil is about 10 feet off the ground. There are also many other ammonites and belmenites in the stone, which is also used at SeaTac Airport in Seattle.


A couple of additional points about the article

1. The brown sandstone used at Trinity Church and quarried in Longmeadow, Massachusetts, is the same brown sandstone quarried in Portland, Connecticut, and better known as the brownstone used throughout the east coast.

2. The Keystone Building, which has travertine panels, has had some maintenance issues in the past. Many of the panels have had to be replaced or reattached because water has gotten into the stone and frozen and cracked it. This occurs commonly with travertine, if used in colder climates.

3. As noted in the story, the Aquia Creek sandstone used at the St. Paul’s has suffered a bit. If you go up to the columns you can see how many times they have had to be repaired.

4. In regard to the slate at Memorial Hall and the colors, the article needs a bit of a clarification. Oxygen does color the stone green or purplish but there was less oxygen in that environment relative to the amount of oxygen that fostered the red slate.