1. Estimate the height of the sandstone cliff to the SW of the cache site.
2. How was the sandstone formed? What caused the creation of the sandstone cliffs?
3. Post a picture of yourself at the cache site with your GPS and at one of Calgary's historic sandstone buildings. Please be sure to indicate the name of the sandstone building and the year built in your log.
A closer look at the historic sandstone quarries can be obtained about 10 - 20 metres west of the posted coordinates. Enjoy the hunt!
In November of 1886, many wooden buildings along Calgary's main street were destroyed in a devastating fire and Calgarians decided to rebuild with a safer, and more durable, building material. Townspeople noticed the potential of the massive sandstone outcrops along the Bow and Elbow river valleys and they opened the first quarry in 1886. At the height of the "Sandstone Era," fifteen quarries operated in and around Calgary and the beautiful golden-brown sandstone buildings gave the city its deserved title - The Sandstone City of the West. Most of the city's quarries were destroyed by city expansion, but the remains of the Edworthy Quarry can be seen immediately south and west of the entrance road to Edworthy Park.
The sandstone outcrops belong to the Paskapoo Formation of the Paleocene age, 58 to 65 million years old. Today the Paskapoo Formation is found from Pincher Creek in the south to east of Grande Cache in the north, and extends from the east side of the Foothills to the Hand Hills, east of Drumheller. Sandstone from the Calgary area quarries was used to build large government buildings, schools, churches, and private buildings; as demand increased it was shipped to other cities in Alberta. Perhaps the most significant sandstone building is the Legislature Building in Edmonton which was built mainly of rock quarried at Glenbow, just west of Calgary. The Sandstone Era came to a close in 1915 with the outbreak of the First World War, although there was a short-lived revival of quarrying north of Cochrane in the early 1930s.
Information obtained from the book "Geological Wonders in Alberta" by the Provincial Museum of Alberta.