I promise, this will be the last post from that ride on
April 17th to Reedsburg.
If you read last Wednesday’s blog, you may remember that we
drove to the tiny town of Rock Springs to visit the Big Cat Rescue. (The town
was a little bit bigger than this one building, but not by much.)
From the Wisconsin DNR website:
Ableman's Gorge is a classic gorge cut by the Baraboo
River through Baraboo quartzite, Cambrian sandstone, and conglomerate. The
cliffs and rocky slopes rise about 200 feet above the river to form a wall
nearly three-fourths of a mile long, oriented east-west, which then abruptly
turns south for a similar distance. The latter portion is 250-450 feet wide and
is composed of irregular quartzite cliffs. Ableman's Gorge is owned by the DNR
and the University of Wisconsin and was designated a State Natural Area in
1969.
The website also says:
The area is widely used for geology research and a plaque
honors researcher Charles Van Hise, who formulated some of his principles of
structural deformation and metamorphism here.
This is from the dedication of the historic site:
Van Hise Monolith Gains National Historic Status - Terry
Devitt
Tucked away in the Baraboo River Valley gorge is the rock
that made Wisconsin famous.
First used more than a century ago by University of
Wisconsin geologist Charles R. Van Hise to teach some of the principles of
geology, the solitary outcrop of Baraboo quartzite is for scientists the single
most famous geological feature in the garden of stony wonders that is the
Baraboo Hills.
A mecca of geology, like much of the region, the rock was
used by Van Hise to show his disciples the hidden secrets of the structure and
history of the Earth. And his students and generations of textbooks writers
carried its lessons worldwide.
Who knew that a rock could be world-famous? I don't recall ever studying geology, even though I love rocks. I feel like I have missed out on so much by living my sheltered life.
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