This is an Earthcache that takes you to the Mount Simon Escarpment, where an important sandstone layer got named due the escarpment’s proximity to Mount Simon. The Mt Simon Escarpment is not visible in many places because it is the lowest of the sedimentary sandstones. An escarpment is a steep slope or long cliff that forms as an effect of erosion or faulting and separates two relatively flat areas of different elevations.
To log this Earthcache, go to the posted coordinates which is located at one end of the escarpment and notice the view posted in the gallery. Then hike down the bottom of the escarpment, until you get to the other end. You will need to make a view observations along the way and answer the following questions:
- What is the elevation at the top of the escarpment, anywhere on the flat trail that you walked from the parking area?
- What is the coordinates of the other end of the escarpment?
- Why do you think that Mt Simon sandstone is exposed here?
You should message me with your 3 answers prior to logging the cache. Pictures along the way are appreciated, but not required.
Mount Simon sandstone is most often hundreds of feet underground, capped by the harder Eau Claire sandstone. But you can see Mount Simon sandstone exposed here at the posted coordinates, and it is for this escarpment that this sandstone layer was named Mount Simon sandstone. The same type of sandstone has again surfaced in the western part of Tennessee. It is a deep underground layer in much of Illinois and Indiana. This sandstone is also visible on the east side of Duncan Creek in Irvine Park in Chippewa Falls. The Mt. Simon formation has been described in a geological survey of this area as clean, white, sandstone about 250 feet thick. Mt Simon sandstone contains no fossils.
Mt. Simon sandstone sits atop a granite basement stock from billions of years ago.
On top of nearby Mt. Simon is Eau Claire sandstone. An example of this is located at a road cut south of Eau Claire near the junction of U.S. 53 and CTH II. Local examples can be found near Mt. Washington. There are other evidences of Eau Claire sandstone in the area. Between Independence and Arcadia are several cuts exposing the stone. Eau Claire sandstone is younger that Mt Simon sandstone and does contain trilobites, and other fossils. The very upper part of the top of the peak of Mt Simon is Eau Claire sandstone, and is more resistant to erosion than Mt Simon sandstone.
The Mount Simon Sandstone, the oldest known post-Precambrian unit in Indiana and the basal unit in the Potsdam Supergroup, is recognized mostly in the subsurface. It consists of poorly sorted fine-grained to very coarse grained sandstones that are generally poorly consolidated. A general color change occurs downward from white to yellowish gray to grayish red below. Gray and maroon shale is present throughout the formation in beds ranging from less than a foot to tens of feet in thickness, and another prominent shale zone, as thick as 60 feet occurs in the upper part of the Mount Simon in northwestern Indiana.
The Mount Simon Sandstone is known by this name in Illinois, Indiana, Tennessee, Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, and Kentucky and is the equivalent of the Lamotte Sandstone of Missouri.
References:
https://igs.indiana.edu/compendium/comp0i04.cfm
http://www.usgennet.org/usa/wi/county/eauclaire/history/ourstory/vol1/beginnings.html