What is a Spring?
A spring is a place where water moving underground finds an opening to the land surface and emerges, sometimes as just a trickle, maybe only after a rain, and sometimes in a continuous flow. Spring water can also emerge from heated rock underground, giving rise to hot springs. This is not a hot spring.
How are springs formed?
Springs may be formed in any sort of rock. Small ones are found in many places. In this area, the springs are formed in limestone and dolomite. Both dolomite and limestone fracture relatively easily. When weak carbonic acid (formed by rainwater percolating through organic matter in the soil) enters these fractures it dissolves bedrock. When it reaches a horizontal crack or a layer of non-dissolving rock such as sandstone or shale, it begins to cut sideways. As the process continues, the water hollows out more rock, eventually admitting an airspace, at which point the spring stream can be considered a cave. This process often takes tens to hundreds of thousands of years to complete. There are caves in the area.
What is the bedrock here?
This area is called the West Baden Group and is described as shale, sandstone, and micritic and skeletal limestone.
Sandstone is a very porous sedimentary rock. It has withstood the harsh weathering process of the earth’s surface to make sandstone a resistant mineral of quartz, feldspar, and rock fragments.This rock varies in color, depending on the mixture of minerals.Feldspar can leave brown, pink, gray, gold, or cream tones of color.
Limestone has color hues of white-to-gray and white-to-light brown with occasional black, green, or red appearing and here is 97% calciite (crushed sea shells). This is the thickest layer of the bedrock.
Here the New Albany Shale is compacted clay and silt, with brown, black, and green in its coloring. It is very brittle.
Where is this water coming from?
You are standing next to the spring at 503ft above sea level. As soon as you walk away you are starting to climb higher! That big very steep hill that starts at your feet goes up to 713ft. The one right behind it gets up to 914ft. You will notice that the whole town has these high hills all around it. These hills are all of that limestone rock. Any water from rain or snow seeps into the rocks high up these hills and filters its way down through the rocks, dissolving minerals from the rock into it as it flows to the spring.
This water is cold and clear—is it fit to drink?
The quality of the water in the local groundwater system will generally determine the quality of spring water. The quality of water discharged by springs can vary greatly because of factors such as the quality of the water that recharges the aquifer and the type of rocks with which the groundwater is in contact. The rate of flow and the length of the flow-path through the aquifer affects the amount of time the water is in contact with the rock, and thus, the amount of minerals that the water can dissolve.
So what makes Pluto Spring special? It's minerals and it's story!
First it was the wildlife that were attracted to the area in large numbers to lick the minerals that had been brought to the surface in the flowing waters. That brought the native Indian tribes of the area who were hunting those animals. The French then had an outpost established nearby. Things really changed when a business man bought a large section of the land around the local springs about 1831. By the 1840's he an a partner had build a three story guest house and were selling the water.
The sales pitch was that the mineral water from Pluto Spring had magical healing powers. There was a long list of illnesses claimed to be cured by this water. They bottled this water and “Pluto Water” was sold in drug stores across the U.S.
Questions:
1. A lot of both lithium and sulfur minerals are dissolved in this water. Does that suggest a short or long flow-path before the water comes up at the spring?
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Can you see the moving water, if so is it murky or clear?
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If clear does the bottom look like sand, gravel, or shale?
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About how close to the ground surface is the bedrock here? (look at bottom of spring)
Contact the cache owner with the answers do not post them.
Post a picture somewhere at the site. Face not necessary, but a hand, foot, GPS, or something else should be in the picture.
NOTE: The reason you do net see bubbling running water flowing out of the spring is that the water is being drawn off in pipes to supply the indoor mineral pool in the hotel.
There is much more to the local history which you can learn while in town!