Garnet Books Stories In Stone How Geology Influenced Connectic

Stories in Stone Early Connecticut Silver, 1700–1840 by Peter Bohan and Philip Hammerslough Introduction and Notes by Erin Eisenbarth The Old Leather Man by Daniel DeLuca Westover School: Giving Girls a Place of Their Own by Laurie Lisle Henry Austin: In Every Variety of Architectural Style by James F. O’Gorman Making Freedom: The Extraordinary Life of Venture Smith by Chandler B. Saint and George Krimsky Welcome to Wesleyan: Campus Buildings by Leslie Starr Stories in Stone How Geology Influenced Connecticut History and Culture by Jelle Zeilinga de Boer Stories in Stone How Geology Influenced Connecticut History and Culture Jelle Zeilinga de Boer w e s l e ya n u n i v e r s i t y p r e s s m i d d l e t o w n, c o n n e c t i c u t Published by Wesleyan University Press, Middletown, CT 06459 www.wesleyan.edu/wespress © 2009 by Wesleyan University Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America 54321 Wesleyan University Press is a member of the GreenPress Initiative. The paper used in this book meets their minimum requirement for recycled paper. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Zeilinga de Boer, Jelle. Stories in stone / Jelle Zeilinga de Boer. p. cm. — (Garnet books) Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 978–0-8195–6891–5 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Geology—Connecticut. I. Title. qe93.z45 2009 557.46—dc22 2009011073 c To Bjorn, Byrthe, and Babette, with apologies for all those years in which they had to share their father with Connecticut’s rocks This page intentionally left blank Contents Preface Acknowledgments Introduction 1. In the Beginning: Continental Fusion and Breakup 2. Weather and Climate: Hurricanes and Ice Ages 3. Connecticut’s Geologic Treasures: Gems and Ores Sidebar: Gems in Quarry Tailings Sidebar: Other Historic Quarries and Mines in Connecticut 4. Settlers and Soils in the Central Valley: The Legacy of Glacial Lake Hitchcock 5. The Metacomet Ridge: The Scientific, Political, and Cultural Impact of an Old Lava Flow Sidebar:The Curse of the Black Dog 6. The Moodus Noises: The Science and Lore of Connecticut Earthquakes ix xi 1 8 27 56 74 82 83 105 129 132 156 7. Visitors from Space: The Weston and Wethersfield Meteorites 157 Afterword: Our Lithic Inheritance 171 Bibliography 175 Index 197 Sidebar: Moodus Tremors and Sonic Booms This page intentionally left blank Preface Many of us have, at one time or another, wished that stones could speak. It first happened to me when I was six years old and was standing on a tropical beach holding a stone to my ear. I had just listened to a shell, and although it spoke in a whisper, the stone remained silent! My experiment was triggered by a volcano near my childhood home in Indonesia that had rumbled for weeks. I had been told that the rocks inside this giant had woken up and were plotting their escape. The piece of rock that I held in my hand was volcanic, and I was wondering what it could tell me about its birth and travels to the ocean. Only much later did I learn that the deep hum of an awakening volcano is caused by the rise and expansion of gas bubbles in magma. After the Japanese invasion during World War II and subsequent Indonesian revolution, I returned to the Netherlands with what remained of my family and decided to study earth science. To find anything volcanic, Dutch geology students had to cross borders and travel to the Massif Central in France. There we found phonolites, a volcanic rock that emits a clear tone when struck. By varying the sizes of assorted fragments, we produced a xylophone and composed rock music. While working in Central America many years later, I learned about another, more sinister “voice” of the rocks: the rumble that precedes the shaking of an earthquake. Over