Granite Quarry Site – The Islands Provincial Park EarthCache
Granite Quarry Site – The Islands Provincial Park
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The 350 million-year-old granite under The Islands Provincial Park is so close in spots you can touch it. Learn where it came from and how in the past this was an important source of building materials.
Welcome to Nova Scotia’s first and oldest camping park opened some 50 years ago on land jutting out into Shelburne Harbor. The Islands Provincial Park is located on 350 million year old granite. The position of the park offers an exceptional view of Shelburne town’s marina and historic waterfront. Granite boulders pepper the land, and outcroppings rises three-stories out of the ground. For campers, picnickers, photographers, and natural history and geology buffs, The Islands is a coastal natural history treasure chest open for the explorer.
This earthcache begins as many do in the area with the last glacial period. The movement of the last massive glaciers uncovered this land more then 10,000 years ago, exposing the granite bedrock in many places. With this granite so accessible and a water transportation route close at hand, it’s not surprising this area was of interest to early mining companies. Beginning in 1890 a high-quality granite known as “Scotia Grey” was quarried right here in what is now The Islands park. Remains of a quarry site can be seen behind the park office building along the edge of the campground road. This quarrying continued on and off until the 1960s. Its stones were used in architecture, for monuments, and for cobblestones in Nova Scotia as well as in Europe. Look for the local grey granite in the Shelburne Post Office (built 1908), the Halifax Herald Building (1895) or the immense St. Bernard Church (1942) on the Acadian French shore as these were all once part of this park.
Granite underlies over 50% of the Nova Scotia interior. This formation is called the Shelburne Granite Plain one of the larger granite plutons (an intrusive igneous rock body that crystallized from magma slowly cooling below the earth’s surface) in Nova Scotia. Granite is found throughout mainland Nova Scotia and Cape Breton in plutons of various sizes and represents about 20-25% of the bedrock across the province. The largest single pluton is the South Mountain Batholith, which is the dominant feature in the landscape of southwestern Nova Scotia. It extends in an arc from Yarmouth to Halifax with outcrops over an area of 10,000 square km.
All of the granite exposed in this area was intruded during the Acadian Orogeny (a natural mountain building event solely as a result of plate tectonics) in the Late Devonian and Early Carboniferous periods. It is quite variable in chemical composition, texture, and color but has a common origin in the crustal disturbance of the period. Granite is very resistant to erosion and tends to form the highest ground in an eroded landscape such as The Islands Park. Granite is a hard, impermeable crystalline rock and is resistant to erosion. It tends to form knolls and upland areas characterized by a hummocky, boulder-strewn surface with thin, acid soils and large areas of exposed bedrock. Water can penetrate the body of granite only along the joints or fractures, which may be several meters apart. Most precipitation is therefore held on the irregular surface in numerous interconnected bogs, shallow lakes and streams.
As you spend time exploring the park you will find evidence of drilling of many of the erratics. These general are not good quality granite blocks and it was used only in the building of foundations or bridges. The good quality granite used in buildings and monuments comes from deep under ground. While the granite quarry in the park was once a deep open pit it has since been filled in for safety reasons. But if you have a chance to talk with older people in the area they will all tell you what a find place this once was for swimming. Please follow the signs and do not go near the quarry.
The posted coordinates will bring to a location along the campground road the overlooks the old quarry. You can see pieces of equipment next to the road. Remember this is an earthcache so there is no container just a science lesson and small task. Please remember there is no reason that you should go anywhere near the old quarry.
To log this Earthcache: You must send an email to me through my profile with the following information: Find a drilled section of granite and look at the grain along the drill marks, this can be easily done by wetting the granite with water first. Describe the size of the grain, if the grain is small it cooled quickly and if the grain is large it cool slowly. Grain size can vary from about a millimeter to as large as several centimeters. When you post your log please include a photo of you or your hand, your GPS and with a drilled erratic in background, you may also want to include in your log the location coordinates of the drilled erratic. You will find these erratic scattered all over the island. Please begin your email with the name of the earthcache and make sure your log includes the number of people in your group. In your log please take the time to describe what you find interesting about this location and the park.
Please remember to help preserve and protect this beautiful park for the enjoyment of future generations. Plants, animals and rocks are an important part of its natural heritage. Please do not damage or remove them and please make sure to practice “Carry-in-carry out" to keep this park special for the future visitors.
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