Located in the Pacolet River Heritage Preserve in Spartanburg County and operated by the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources.
The trail is an out and back 2.3 mile hike and is well defined.
Soapstone (also known as steatite or soaprock) is a metamorphic rock, a talc-schist. It is largely composed of the mineral talc and is rich in magnesium.
It is produced by dynamothermal metamorphism and metasomatism, which occurs at the areas where tectonic plates are subducted, changing rocks by heat and pressure, with influx of fluids, but without melting.
It has been a medium for carving for thousands of years.
The soapstone quarries located in Spartanburg and Cherokee counties are distinct, well preserved examples of a once numerous, but now rapidly vanishing, specialized procurement site.
These quarries are important archeological resources, which due to their location, preservation and intact context offer data amenable to research problems in many different areas.
The most prominent features of the quarry site are large outcropping boulders of soapstone. Around the boulders there occur depressions and concentrations of soapstone debris.
Topographically, the quarry deposits occur along ridges. Soapstone, a hydrous magnesium silicate, can occur geologically by the alteration of certain ultramafic igneous intrusives that occur within the metamorphic rocks.
The photo above shows the beginning stage of a bowl that was never finished .
The soapstone outcrops are fragile and should not be touched or carved into.
Below is a trail map to the Earthcache site and the entire Pacolet River Heritage Preserve.
To log this earthcache as a find you must do the following;
1-Tell me the year that this area was accepted into the national register of historic places.
2-Photograph and upload the image of yourself at the given coordinates with your GPSr.
3-While at the Earthcache site, tell me what role the Pacolet River has played in shaping the soapstone outcroppings?
Please do not post your answers on the cache page.