Nose Creek Sandstone Quarry EarthCache
Nose Creek Sandstone Quarry
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Located along the Nose Creek Pathway system this sandstone quarry could be easily overlooked if you are not paying attention.
Nose Creek today is a calm, meandering stream that winds its way down a peaceful valley in northwest Calgary and is a popular green space for Calgary's growing population. The creek is clearly much smaller than the valley it occupies (a 'misfit' stream) and was not capable of eroding a valley of this size. The current that created the valley now confining Nose Creek was in force back at the end of the last ice age, when large quantities of meltwater spewed out from retreating ice sheets, at times completely filling up this valley. The valley that confines Nose Creek is termed a 'glacial outwash channel', a relic of a climate long ago. Other examples of ancient outwash channels in the Calgary area include the Fish Creek valley, the Nose Creek valley from 17th Avenue north to Airdrie, and the Big Hill Creek valley that houses the Cochrane Ranche Provincial Historic Site.
The small cliff at the edge of the creek is an outcrop of Paskapoo Formation sandstone, which dates back to the Early Tertiary (Paleocene). This cliff was excavated as a potential sandstone quarry, one of many quarries from which Calgarians acquired the sandstone blocks used to construct many of the older heritage buildings that still exist in the downtown area.
Paskapoo Sandstone consists of sand grains eroded from the ancestral Rocky Mountains and transported to the east by rivers 65 to 58 million years ago. Over time, the sands were buried under hundreds of metres of younger sediment, cemented with minerals precipitated from groundwater, and then slowly exposed by erosion to form the sandstone outcrops that can be seen today along our river valleys.
This site is one of four along this valley that was mined for it's sandstone.
To log this cache please post a picture of your gps at the site, and email the answers (do not post) the following questions.
1) What years was this quarry mined?
2) How where the huge bricks transported to downtown Calgary for use?
3) Please estimate the height of the cliff that was being mined?
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