Not long after I documented the tombstone at Mountain View Cemetery made of the extremely old Morton Gneiss, I spotted the same stone—four polished disks of it—flanking the entryway of a house in the Grandview neighborhood.
This stuff is certainly a gift to the world. And yet just today I bent down by someone’s fence to caress a boulder of our own red chert, equally striking in its own way.
27 July 2012 at 12:00 pm
Hi Andrew,
I’m doing a history book about the Dimond and Fruitvale districts (it’s the fourth is a series; I done one about the Laurel District; another about Alameda and the third about the site of those great knockers, Mountain View Cemetery)
I would like to start the book with some geology. Can I get your permission to use the geology map you have posted on the blog? I would also like to use some of the information you have here (with the proper attribution,of course) and need your OK.
[Answered -- Andrew]
17 January 2013 at 10:07 am
I was born in Morton, MN, the little town where that gneiss is quarried, so I enjoy seeing references to it from so far away. The saying in Morton is: “Morton: don’t take it for granite, it is really gneiss.”
25 May 2013 at 9:45 am
hi, I now live in Colorado and part time in NH, where I’m taking a geology course at DArtmouth. Just happened to see your site. I have some of the Morton gneiss in Boulder. When I went to Iceland a few years ago, I left from Minneapolis and drove thru Morton to collect samples. I will try to have a thin section made and send you the digital pic–may take a few months.
It’s really amazing to have this slice of Archean rock.
I hadn’t know previously that it had been quarried and sent around.