Aggregates Manager

September 2014

Aggregates Manager Digital Magazine

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AGGREGATES MANAGER September 2014 36 by Bill Langer Bill Langer is a consulting research geologist who spent 41 years with the U.S. Geological Survey before starting his own business. He can be reached at Bill_Langer@hotmail.com A t the end of the Mexican-American War (1848), the United States came into possession of a huge wilderness of rugged deserts, deep canyons, and rocky plateaus. In 1857, retired naval officer Edward Beale was chosen to construct a road through the newly acquired land with a crew of 50 men and 22 camels. Thousands upon thousands of people followed in his tracks. We are among those people. Old Route 66 closely followed Beale's Wagon Road across Arizona. Interstate 40, our route for the day, closely follows old Route 66 through northeastern Arizona. Driving by the border town of Lupton, we are welcomed by awe- some vermilion sandstone cliffs replete with statues of bear, deer, and eagles peering down on us. Such a fine site to see. During 1905, Lupton became the site of the first railroad station established by the Atchinson, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railroad in Arizona. Many of the small Arizona towns that we pass got their start as stations along the railroad. One such town is Sanders. My wife and I have been driving by Sanders since the late 1990s. On the south side of the road, there is a railroad siding that always has a string of covered hopper cars waiting to be loaded with some sort of mineral commodity. When we first drove by here, bentonite clay was being mined and processed at the plant. Recently, a nationwide boom in shale gas and shale oil development has created an enormous demand for frac sand to hold open fractures in reservoir rock so oil and gas can flow to wells. The bentonite at Sanders is mined from a deposit that has a sandy over- burden. Geologic studies identified a paleochannel cutting through the site. Sand in that paleochannel meets American Petroleum Institute Standards for frac sand. So today, frac sand, and plenty of it, is the main commodity being mined, processed, and shipped from the site. Such a fine site to see. Navajo and Holbrook lie west of Sanders. Driving between those two cities, we come upon the Petrified Forest National Park, which is located within the Painted Desert. During the Late Triassic, northeastern Arizona was located just north of the equator and was a tropical wetland with large trees, lush plants, and numerous animals. During the rainy season, rivers flooded and washed trees into river channels where they were buried by layers of gravelly sand containing ash from volcanoes further to the west. The trees were transformed into stone when organic materials were replaced with silica contained within the volcanic ash. The silica was colored with oxides of iron and manganese giving the petrified trees their beautiful coloring. Millions of years later, the petrified logs were unearthed by erosion. Such a fine site to see. Next, we come to Meteor Crater. Approximately 50,000 years ago, a 100,000-ton iron-nickel meteorite, about 100 feet in diam- eter, smashed into the Earth and exploded with a force of about 150 times the force of the atomic bomb detonated over Hiroshima, Japan. The impact blasted millions of tons of sandstone and limestone out of the ground resulting in a crater nearly one mile across, 2.4 miles in circumference and more than 550 feet deep. With all the talk about meteors these days, this is a necessary stop along old Route 66. Such a fine site to see. Our next stop finds us standing on a corner in Winslow, Ariz. AM As Route 66 winds into Arizona, there are many mineralogical sites worth visiting. SUCH A FINE SITE to Seeā€¦ Petrified wood in the Painted Desert.

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