The posted coordinates will take you to the Main entrance of the Noble Research Center, home of the Boone Pickens School of Geology at Oklahoma State University, Stillwater campus. Once here you will need to enter the main floor which has several geological displays in an indoor rock garden and glass display cases through the hallways.
Take the elevator to your left to the Lower level and exit to your right to the hallway of display cases.
Admission is free and open to the public.
*** Building hours are 7 AM to 9 PM Monday - Friday ***
Take your time enjoying the many interesting geological displays.
You are specifically looking for the large cluster of Red Garber Sandstone more commonly known as Oklahoma Rose Rock.
From the main entrance turn to the left and you will find the Rose Rocks displayed along the south wall.
Oklahoma Rose Rocks
Few mineral specimens are as distinctly recognizable and traceable to their source as the barite roses from Oklahoma. These are also known as "rose rocks" and "barite-sand rosettes."
The rose rock is unique to Oklahoma, occurring only in an L-shaped strip of Red Permian Garber sandstone deposited millions of years ago from Frederick, OK in the southwest near the Texas border to near Blackwell, OK in north central part of the state near the Kansas border. Most barite roses are found in the Garber sandstone that runs roughly from Pauls Valley OK northward to near Guthrie. Garber sandstones (like other Red Permian sandstones) are extremely common throughout the world, but barite roses are extremely rare.
A very few barite roses have been found in Kansas, Morocco, and Australia, which also have deposits of red Garber sandstone. No one really knows why barite roses are rarely found elsewhere except for in the narrow Garber sandstone band east of Oklahoma City, but because of their prevalence there and rarity elsewhere, it was easy for the Oklahoma State Legislature to decree the Barite Rose the official Oklahoma state rock in 1968.
Barite roses occur as a single rose, in pairs or clusters of roses. The formations range from the size of an pea to about four inches in diameter. The largest single specimen ever discovered was seventeen inches in diameter and ten inches high and weighed 125 pounds. The largest cluster weighed more than one thousand pounds with several hundred roses in the cluster.
One of their unique features is the disc-shaped barite crystals that form the “petals.” Most barite crystals are tabular or bladed in shape, but those of the Rose Rock are flatter, rounder and thicker disks made of a blend of barite and the Garber sandstone the crystals grow in. The chemical composition of each “petal” of a barite rose is barite crystal (BaSO4) and quartz sand (SiO2). A small amount of hematite (Fe2O3) in the sandstone gives these uniquely-shaped barite crystals their red color.
An electron micrograph (above) shows the boundary between a barite rose and the enclosing Garber Sandstone. The roses formed when barite crystals precipitated from groundwater in the pore spaces between quartz sand grains within the Garber Sandstone. The roses reflect the shapes of the barite crystals, and hence they are cataloged as minerals.
Exactly how the roses form is still a mystery, but one theory proposes that roses form when groundwater containing barium and sulfides migrated through fissures, fractures, and porous areas of the Garber sandstone. When the groundwater came into contact with air trapped within the sandstone rock, the sulfur in the water oxidized, causing the dissolved barite to precipitate out, and form crystals that grew to become a rose rock.
Another theory hypothesizes that at some point two sources of water, one rich in barium and another rich in sulfur mixed as they flowed through the porous Garber sandstone. When these two sources mixed, a chemical reaction caused the roses to be deposited inside the sandstone.
Why Only In Oklahoma?
Red Permian sandstones like the Garber (-250 million years old) are common throughout the world, yet barite roses are extremely rare. The origin of the roses, therefore, does not result from the depositional environment of the sandstone, but stems from some other uncommon feature of Oklahoma's geology.
The vast majority of Rose Rocks (and best specimens) are found around Noble, OK near Norman, OK south of Oklahoma City. This distinction has earned Noble, Oklahoma, the nickname Rose Rock Capital of the World!
Rose Rock information for this Earthcache obtained from publications from the University of Oklahoma School of Geology and Geophysics, the Oklahoma Geological Survey for the earth science research, the Oklahoma Historical Society publications, and displays at the Boone Pickens School of Geology at Oklahoma State University.
A third theory or legend comes from Cherokee Indians surrounding the “Trail of Tears,” the forced removal of the Cherokees from their historic homelands in the southeastern United States to the newly-designated Oklahoma Indian Territory in 1833:
“When gold was found in Georgia, the government forgot its treaties and drove the Cherokees to Oklahoma. One fourth of them died on the journey west. But God, looking down from heaven, decided to commemorate the brave Cherokees and so, as the blood of the braves and the tears of the maidens dropped to the ground, he turned them into stone in the shape of a Cherokee Rose. This is why they are so plentiful in Oklahoma, the end of the Trail of Tears."
Logging Requirements
You will need to complete the following requirements to log this Earthcache:
Send a geocaching message or email with the answers to the questions below. Found It logs without the required information sent within 7 days of logging will be deleted.
Do NOT post any answers in your found It log.
1. Give me an estimate of the height of the Rose Rock cluster on display.
2. On the opposite side of the hallway is a display of a very similar "rose" formation from Northern Algeria what is the 3 word name of this formation?
3.Which one of the of the three theories do you believe most accurately explains the formation of the rose rock in the Garber Sandstone.
4. To verify you visited the site, what is the nick name ("in quotes") of the Quartz boxwood displayed to the left of the Rose Rock cluster.
5. Include in your log a photo with you and your favorite rock in the garden at the entrance or a non-revealing photo of yourself at or near the posted location.
If you happen to go searching for your own Rose Rock while in Oklahoma, PLEASE upload a photo of your search or any Rose Rocks you find.
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