June 2010 PICK&PACK Volume 50 Number 5 CSMS is an incorporated nonprofit organization with these goals: • To promote and disseminate knowledge of the earth sciences, especially as they relate to miner- alogy, lapidary, and fossils. • To encourage study, collection, N THE OAD TO ICHITA THE and fashioning of minerals. ON THE ROAD TO: WICHITA & THE RMFMS • To accomplish the same through BY DR. MIKE NELSON, CSMS social meetings, lectures, pro- grams, displays, shows, and field I was always looking ahead. I used to do all kinds of things for entertain- trips. ment. When I was young, we had no radio, no TV. We were 30 miles from the • The Pick & Pack is published 10 public library, out in the sticks in Western Kansas, and so I'd do arithmetic times each year to assist and pro- exercises. Clyde Tombaugh, discoverer of Pluto. mote the above. In April, I was returning from an interesting trip to the Rocky Mountain Fed- Proud Members of: American Federation of Mineralogical eration meeting in Wichita, KS, hosted by the Wichita Gem and Mineral So- Societies (AFMS) ciety. While driving half-way across my home state I was constantly looking www.amfed.org at the rocks and land forms, and made several stops to better examine out- Rocky Mountain Federation of Min- eralogical Societies (RMFMS) crops. The open spaces (and cruise control) also allowed me to exercise my www.rmfms.org brain and the thoughts begin to flow into my notebook (only compiled at rest Colorado Federation of Gem & Min- stops)! One thought was to give readers of the Pick & Pack some additional eral Societies (CFGMS) information about the physiography, land forms, and general surficial geol- Colorado Springs ogy of our neighbor to the east. Mineralogical Society CSMS members traveling to Wichita from Colorado Springs most likely Founded in 1936 Lazard Cahn drove I-70 east from Limon, CO, to Salina, KS, and then turned south on I- Honorary President 135. The I-70 drive often gives visitors the impression that Kansas is “flat”! Actually the state has a varied and quite diverse topography with numerous Articles in this Issue: exposures of interesting and fossiliferous rock formations. The “flat” impres- On the Road... 1-3 sion mostly comes from travelers driving I-70 east across the High Plains Lake George 2010 Show 4 Physiographic Province (Fig. 1) to Hays, although the road actually loses/ Pebble Pup/Juniors 4 gains about 2000 feet in elevation (~2000 feet to ~4000 feet) during this trav- Florissant Field Trip erse. The road was plotted and constructed on the interfluves, those areas be- CSMS Youth Program 5-6 tween the east flowing streams; therefore, it is like driving on a plank up/ Cheyenne Club Show 6 down a slope. Traveling north/south through the same area one would notice WMMI Happenings 6 many changes in elevation crossing the major streams and their tributaries President’s Corner 7 and then back upon the interfluves. CSMS Utah Trip 7 The High Plains are underlain by the Miocene-Pliocene Ogallala Formation CSMS Silent Auction 8 and outcrops are numerous; however, along I-70 much of the bedrock is cov- Things to Do 9 ered by a wind-blown clay called “loess.” The Ogallala is composed of sand From the Library 9 and gravel eroded off the rising mountains in Colorado, and elsewhere (this is a broad uplift of the Rocky Mountains termed epeirogenic movement), and Ask a Geologist 10 transported eastward by numerous streams. The High Plains may be best Woodland Park Show 11 known for its subsurface ground water deposits termed the Ogallala Aquifer, Creede Symposium 11 the water source for hundreds of center pivot irrigation pumps. The surface Field Trips 12 outcrops also have produced a tremendous array of vertebrate fossils that tell the story of a warm moist climate with the lands supporting a well-vegetated Exhibiting CSMS 2010 12 grassland savanna. Today the High Plains are arid, short grasslands. Youth Program Takes Break 12 The north-central part of the state, east of the High The Suburban Rockhound 12 Cont. on Page 2 Plains, is known as the Smoky Hills (Fig. 1) and JuneCOLORADO 2010 SPRINGS MINERALOGICAL SOCIETY PO BOX 2PICK&PACK COLORADO SPRINGS, COLORADO 80901-0002 www.csms.usPage 1 Cont. from Page 1... Fig. 3. Stone fence posts quarried from the “fencepost limestone member” of the Greenhorn Limestone. Early Fig. 1. Physiographic map of Kansas. Courtesy of Kansas Geo- settlers in Kansas noted a shortage of trees suitable for logical Survey fence posts so used available material--stone. Photo cour- tesy of Kansas Geological Survey. exposures of Cretaceous rocks dominate the land- the Fort Hays Limestone Member of the Niobrara scape. Generally speaking these rocks are quite similar Formation. At the western edge of the Smoky to those cropping out along the Front Range here in Hills the Cretaceous outcrops actually extend like Colorado. The easternmost hills are represented by fingers into the High Plains along the major outcrops of the Dakota Formation and underlying streams of the area and the richly fossiliferous Kiowa Formation. The many beds of resistant sand- Smoky Hills Chalk Member of the Niobrara For- stone form prominent escarpments along the eastern mation crops out (Figs. 1, 4). Fig. 4. Outcrops of the Smoky Hill Chalk Member of the Fig. 2. Picnic shelter constructed on the summit of Coronado Heights, an escarpment of Dakota Sandstone along the eastern Niobrara Formation at Wildcat Canyon, western Kansas. front of the High Plains. Photo courtesy of Kansas Geological Photo courtesy Kansas Geological Survey. Survey. front such as Coronado Heights near Lindsborg (Fig. Near Salina I-135 connects with I-70 (continuing 2). In addition, the formations are known for their on the Kansas City) and heads south toward large cannonball concretions (at Rock City near Min- Wichita. Most of this trip is in an area called the neapolis) and mushroom rocks (at Mushroom Rocks Wellington-McPherson Lowlands and the topog- State Park near Kanopolis). raphy is very subdued (Fig. 1). The Lowlands are composed of sand and gravel mostly derived from The Kiowa and Dakota are mixed marine and/or erosion of the Ogallala Formation to the north and streams/beaches/ deltas/floodplains and represent the west and deposited by late Pliocene and Pleisto- initial incursion of the Western Interior Seaway cene streams (Ancestral Smoky Hill River) flow- (WIS). West of the Dakota/Kiowa outcrops are the ing into the Arkansas River (which flows through Greenhorn (Limestone) Hills with their hundreds of Wichita). The sand and gravel were deposited on miles of stone fence posts (Fig. 3). Finally, the western Smoky Hills are held up by Cont. on Page 3 Page 2 PICK&PACK June 2010 Cont. from Page 2 once took a fishing trip to Lake Inman, the largest top of late Permian rocks, units of significance natural lake in Kansas and one developed in a since they contain very thick beds of salt (halite). sinkhole. My fifth grade school trip was to the salt mines at Hutchinson where we wandered around under- ground without hardhats picking up pieces of hal- ite. In today’s world a fifth grader would not even get close to a mine let alone be taken down a steel- cage elevator. This little excursion by my class of 15 students “in the sticks of Kansas” (see quote by Tombaugh) certainly furthered my interest in col- lecting rocks and minerals. So, that is probably the quickest way to reach Wichita—via Interstates 70 and 135. Once in the city many visitors drive on a major thoroughfare called ‘Meridian Avenue.’ Most travelers do not realize that the legal land descriptions in Kansas, Fig. 5. Red Hills in southern Kansas. These redbeds are Nebraska, Colorado, parts of South Dakota and late Permian in age. Wyoming are based on the Sixth Principle Merid- ian--Meridian Avenue. I also detoured south of the Arkansas River Low- lands to the area bordering Oklahoma termed the I chose another route traveling to Wichita as I Red Hills (Fig. 1). Most visitors to the state would wanted to travel off- course and explore long for- not recognize this landscape as being part of gotten territory and so traveled to Wichita via “flat” Kansas. Late Permian red shales, siltstones highways U.S. 50 and 54 (from La Junta, CO), es- and sandstones are eroded into a variety of tables, sentially following the Arkansas River, and parts buttes and mesas often capped with beds of gyp- of the Santa Fe Trail, from Pueblo to Dodge City, sum and/or dolomite (Fig. 5). The area also has Kansas. In Kansas, this area known as the Arkan- numerous sinkholes as subsurface salt (halite) and sas River Lowlands (Fig. 1), traverses through, and gypsum have dissolved leaving a void and then splits, the High Plains, and consists of sand and collapsing. These rocks in the Red Hills represent gravel deposited by the River during the late Terti- the “drying up” of the vast, latest Paleozoic, re- ary and Quaternary. In examining the river pebbles stricted circulation sea. one can often identify almost specific source rocks in Colorado. For example, “Kansas Diamonds” are If one is not going to Wichita and continues east- rounded pebbles of crystal quartz with a source in ward at Salina, the landscape begins to change as Colorado. At the Wichita show I observed a beau- the traveler enters the Flint Hills Physiographic tiful 15 caret faceted “Kansas Diamond”. One Province (Fig. 1), a major range of hills extending other item of interest is that in Kansas the river is north-south through Kansas and south into Okla- pronounced Ark-Kan-sas rather than Ark-kan-saw! homa (Osage Hills).