Paint Mines

Whoa, new blogger confuses me. I think I like it, though.

Recently, Mike and I visited Paint Mines in Calhan, Colorado. Before last week I had never heard of Paint Mines, but it was an optional location for my self-guided field trip for my geology class. It was so cool, and only an hour from Colorado Springs!

I'll try to keep the sciencey speak at a minimum (calling it sciencey is very scientific). These bright formations were formed from eroded Pike's Peak Granite. 55 million years ago, the prairie area was tropical hardwood forest, and the eroded materials slowly covered all that up, creating sandstone chock full of petrified wood. This sandstone was then weathered by wind and water, creating amazing formations like spires and hoodoos in fantastic colors. The sherbet colors are selenite clay and jasper in the rock. Incidentally, if you google "jasper," you get one picture of an orange rock, and 50 bajillion pictures of the twilight actor.

The Paint Mines get their name because apparently the clay was used to make paint pigment by Plains Woodland tribes (technically, I think they might have been bands, but you probably don't care). Archaeologists have found colored ceramics and tools made from petrified wood in the area. I'm not sure that petrified wood would make the best tools, but I guess you work with what you've got. Plus, I'm not an expert (yet).

I call this one "geologic time includes now":

Crumbling cliff:

Big-ass boulder that fell off in the recent past:

Scary.