All About Rocks

geologyrocks:

studyofnature:

( article credit: jersey.uoregon.edu)

1. Igneous Rocks

Igneous rocks are crystalline solids which form directly from the cooling of magma. This is an exothermic process (it loses heat) and involves a phase change from the liquid to the solid state. The earth is made of igneous rock - at least at the surface where our planet is exposed to the coldness of space. Igneous rocks are given names based upon two things: composition (what they are made of) and texture (how big the crystals are).

2. Sedimentary Rocks

In most places on the surface, the igneous rocks which make up the majority of the crust are covered by a thin veneer of loose sediment, and the rock which is made as layers of this debris get compacted and cemented together. Sedimentary rocks are called secondary, because they are often the result of the accumulation of small pieces broken off of pre-existing rocks. There are three main types of sedimentary rocks:

Clastic: your basic sedimentary rock. Clastic sedimentary rocks are accumulations of clasts: little pieces of broken up rock which have piled up and been “lithified” by compaction and cementation.

Chemical: many of these form when standing water evaporates, leaving dissolved minerals behind. These are very common in arid lands, where seasonal “playa lakes” occur in closed depressions. Thick deposits of salt and gypsum can form due to repeated flooding and evaporation over long periods of time.

Organic: any accumulation of sedimentary debris caused by organic processes. Many animals use calcium for shells, bones, and teeth. These bits of calcium can pile up on the seafloor and accumulate into a thick enough layer to form an “organic” sedimentary rock.

3. Metamorphic Rocks

The metamorphics get their name from “meta” (change) and “morph” (form). Any rock can become a metamorphic rock. All that is required is for the rock to be moved into an environment in which the minerals which make up the rock become unstable and out of equilibrium with the new environmental conditions. In most cases, this involves burial which leads to a rise in temperature and pressure. The metamorphic changes in the minerals always move in a direction designed to restore equilibrium. Common metamorphic rocks include slate, schist, gneiss, and marble.

For a list of rock types, visit the Wikipedia rock page

Goshen Cemetery - "An Historians Paradise"

Elsie Masterton described the little cemetery in Goshen as an “historians paradise” in her hilarious book called Nothing Whatever to Do (1956, p.70).

"How young were the majority of the dead here, particularly the women; thirty seemed to have constituted a pretty full life. The men, on the other hand, had been hale and hearty; most of them had all their wives buried near at hand, one next to the other usually they called the first wife 'Beloved Wife,' the next 'Consort,' and from there on they merely used her first name. The children were overwhelming in number. Each family had lost several, at least, in infancy."

Royal Blake's Blast Furnace

For the folks on West Hill, Forest Dale to the west was closer than Rochester to the east. Forest Dale was less than eight miles from John & Stephen Laird's house, the last house in Old Philadelphia before Brandon Gap. Forest Dale was one mile past the road to Goshen.

Charcoal was produced on West Hill for over a half century, and taken across Brandon Gap by teamsters with horse and ox teams, where it was melted down to pig iron at Blake’s, also known as the Forestdale Iron Foundry.

Royal Blake ran the Forest Dale Iron Works from about 1835 thru 1852, when he died. Here, Conant found the kind of iron for his stoves that was most heat resistant, and least likely to crack.

Chester Smith owned about 800 acres of land that extended from West Hill to the basin of Mount Horrid, and sent his teamsters over Brandon Gap on a regular basis, with charcoal (called "coal") that he had made in his pits to the bellows-charged, blast furnace.

Numerous buildings, including a company store, boarding houses, a school, and other buildings have vanished.

The chimney of the blast furnace, last fired in 1865, still stands, despite a construction company blasting the archway with dynamite for construction materials. The owner put a stop to that sort of further destruction, and gave it to the state.

Forest Dale is a hamlet that is the west most part of Brandon, on the "road to Rochester." Several famous inventors lived in Forest Dale, including inventor Thomas Davenport, child prodigy banjo player Francis Bacon, and builder of Bacon & Day Banjo Co., once the "Cadillac of banjos" in the early 1900s.

Before becoming known as a banjo maker the world over, Bacon had a shop in Forest Dale, Rutland County, Vermont, where he built banjos under the name of Bacon Banjo Company.