Welcome to Palm Springs!
Elvis Presley's star at GZ.
The Palm Springs Walk of Fame is a collection of over 400 themed stars that honor those who have helped bring Palm Springs to the world stage. They consits of Red Indian polished granite and are situated over several blocks in downtown Palm Springs. This type of stone comes from India, specifically from two regions called Karnataka (in the south) and Rajasthan (in the north).
The stones are 1.6 to 1.8 billion years old and were formed primarily through the partial melting of pre-existing continental crust during collisional tectonic events, where older metamorphic rocks were remelted and intruded as granite magma. Due to melt rising from the subducting oceanic crust, the Bundelkhand Craton (craton -> meaning old, continental crust made up of mostly hard rock), began to partially split apart which allowed some of that magma to intrude into a newly formed basin. This then hardened into what is known as granite across modern day central and northwestern India.
Fast forward to the present day, the stars that make up the walk of fame in downtown Palm Springs are water-blasted into three-foot-square chunks of Red Indian polished granite (which formed as described above). Each granite blocks weigh 180 pounds, are two inches thick and cost about $15,000 each. There are over 400 stars in Palm Springs, and each of them hold clues to the geologic past of India.
What makes this rock so red is that it has an abundance of a certain chemical compound called iron-oxide, or more commonly and naturally found within the mineral hematite (pronounced he-ma-tite). Hematite is a not-so common mineral in granite, but it only this abundant when high amounts of it exist within the liquid magma. Below is a chart of other common minerals that can be found in granites.
Works Cited
https://walkofthestars.com/faqs
https://www.ocregister.com/2006/03/29/anaheim-oks-walk-of-stars/
https://stonegalleria.in/granite-quarries-in-india-a-state-wise-exploration-of-mines-and-production/
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00206814.2024.2400694?af=R
https://graniteandpaving.com/product/india-red-granite-flat-markers-12x24x4/
https://geologycafe.com/class/chapter3.html
TO LOG A FIND ON THIS CACHE YOU MUST ANSWER ALL OF THE QUESTIONS BELOW. You can contact me through the geocaching message center or email to submit your answers. Any incorrect answers may result in a clarification response.
1. "Palm Springs Walk of Fame" on the first line of your message AND list all geocaching names of your party so I can match your answers to them. If you all want to learn something, I would prefer each cacher send me individual emails in the spirit of earthcaching.
2. Take a photo of you (or you signature item if you don't want your face to be shown) with your favorite star. It doesn't have to be precisely at the above coordinates. You may feel the need to walk around downtown and find your favorite actor or actress and take a photo of their star. This photo MUST be uploaded to your "found it" log. Please do not send any photos through the message center as Groundspeak compresses images. Each log MUST have a unique and different photo. No two logs may contain the same photo.
3. Provide me the name on the star you will be using to complete the following questions and, if possible, provide the GPS coordinates of this star in your found it log so that others can locate it if they so wish.
4. Describe the (a) textures, (b) range of colors and (c) relative sizes of the mineral grains of your star. And (d) how does this compare to adjacent stars?
5. Using the mineral chart above, what is the most dominate mineral in your star? How can you tell?
6. Using the mineral chart above, name at least two other minerals that are present in your star. You cannot use the answer you had in question 5 for this question.
7. Based on your answers above, do you think the granite that make up these stars were sourced from the same place in India? Or were they from different quarries within the country? Explain your answer.
8. Why are these rocks exceptionally red Explain your answer.