Colorado Earth Science

By Steven Wade Veatch The Deepest Secrets of the Earth They say that a person starts writing to record history, but they keep writing because they’ve become a part of it. I still remember the physical toll and the sudden, breathless reward of a specific dig in the Colorado dirt: my rock-hounding partner and I had excavated eighteen feet down, a vertical journey through layers of time. Then, we fo…

By Steven Wade Veatch Publisher: Mission Hill Press Publication Date: May 28, 2024 Price/Format: $17.95 (Paperback) AMAZON Page Count: 80 pages ISBN: 978-1961302709 Stop wondering if that wet stone in your hand is a Petoskey stone. The 2024 guide by Scot and Jennifer Wack is a must-have for Lake Michigan rock hunters. It makes identifying beach finds simple and clear. Scot and Jennifer Wack’s 80-…

Some people enter your life with a quiet gravity, pulling you into their orbit through shared curiosity and a steady presence. For me, that person was Colorado Springs Mineralogical Society (CSMS) member John Harrington. I first noticed John at CSMS meetings in the 1980s. In a room full of hobbyists and experts, John was a fixture in the front row. A retired Air Force veteran and a skilled drafts…

By Steven Wade Veatch Forget the colossal dinosaur skeletons, the giants of paleontology. For me, the real, heart-stopping treasures are fossilized dinosaur eggs. They're not just relics; they're delicate, astonishingly scarce snapshots of these prehistoric reptiles. Composed of fragile crystals, an eggshell is a miracle that survived eons of geological forces. This inherent fragility makes any f…

By Steven Wade Veatch Two brothers, on a sun-drenched afternoon in 1906, take a break from fishing in a nearby lake. They are in a forest clearing, somewhere near Crystal Lake, Michigan. Pine and deciduous trees surround them. Green mounds of moss grow at the base of the tree trunks. Grass pokes up through fallen leaves and pine needles. The air is heavy with the languid perfume of pine. Walt (18…

By Steven Wade Veatch During nearly six decades of membership in the Colorado Springs Mineralogical Society (CSMS), I’ve watched the club’s history unfold through the hands, eyes, and stories of its members. Many mentors and friends are no longer here—people whose voices once filled meeting halls and whose laughter was heard on field trips. I especially miss Ray Berry, Jerry Suchan, and Jack Thom…

1894 found Spencer Penrose and his partner Charles Tutt immersed in the Cripple Creek gold rush. They worked tirelessly to extract gold from their COD (Cash on Delivery) mine and broker real estate deals in the gold camp. Spencer’s brother, Professor Richard Penrose, a renowned expert in geology and mining, would occasionally visit the two partners in Cripple Creek, offering them valuable advice …

By Steven Wade Veatch The year was 1966, and I was 12 years old. I was a relatively new member of the Colorado Springs Mineralogical Society (CSMS) and learned that Richard M. Pearl (1913-1980), a respected member of the society, would present a program at one of its monthly meetings. This was an opportunity I did not want to forgo. I had been reading several books written by Pearl, a professor o…

By Steven Wade Veatch A long-forgotten Colorado Springs rockhounding memory reawakened for me as I looked at a vintage postcard (figure 1) that shows the crossroads of High Drive and the Colorado Springs and Cripple Creek District Railroad, also known as the Short Line Railroad. It was just a short distance from here that I had stepped away from my motorcycle to take a deeper look at the area. On…

by Steven Wade Veatch The “Big Stump” at Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument, Colorado is one of the larger petrified stumps exposed in the Monument: it measures 3.6 meters tall and is 3.7 meters in diameter at breast height (Meyer, 2003). This solitary petrified stump is all that remains of a tree that was more than 60 meters tall when a volcanic mudflow (lahar) buried its base during the l…

Wicked Cripple Creek District . By Jan MacKell Collins. History Press: Charleston, SC. 2024. 176 pages with black and white photographs. Paperback. Book Review by Steven Wade Veatch There are dozens upon dozens of histories written about Colorado’s most famous mining district, Cripple Creek. What sets MacKell Collins' Wicked Cripple Creek District apart from the others is that it pulls back the c…

Dedicated to Estella Leopold, conservationist. * Melting ice washed gravels down, burying the mammoth—hiding it through the ages. And I found a rock at its grave, with secrets deep inside. I broke it, crushed it, sifted it; dissolved it in a beaker, spun it by a centrifuge, and peeled back layers of time. Now only hidden fossils remain: Pollen grains and mossy spores— once floating on an Ice Age …

By Steven Wade Veatch Hidden among geological marvels at a mineral show was a cinnabar-bearing chalcedony breccia-specimen (Figure 1). The term "breccia" refers to a rock composed of angular fragments, while "chalcedony" describes a type of cryptocrystalline quartz. Adding "cinnabar" specifies the presence of mercury sulfide, which creates a distinctive red color. Figure 1. Chalcedony breccia in …

Steven Wade Veatch On a lazy late fall Sunday in 1991, I walked down to Cripple Creek’s business district with my wife Shelly, my friend Mitch, and his wife Jane. Colorado’s legislature had recently legalized gambling in this historic gold mining town. Several entrepreneurs were converting some of the old brick buildings in the historic downtown into casinos. The excitement of the prospect of lim…

By Steven Wade Veatch I remember a scorching summer afternoon in 1992, when, with my new wife Shelly and mother-in-law Karen, I walked on a trail that meandered down the hill known as Cope’s Nipple—named after the 19th-century paleontologist who explored this site for dinosaur bones. People refer to the area as Garden Park, and it is located a few miles north of Cañon City, Colorado. With my moth…

By Steven Wade Veatch Balanced Rock, in Colorado Springs’ Garden of the Gods Park, is an example of a type of geologic feature called “precariously balanced rocks,” or PBRs. These interesting rocks are common in the American West, where dry climates preserve them. They are also found worldwide in other climates. Figure 1. Balanced Rock is a famous PBR in the Garden of the Gods Park, Colorado Spri…

By Steven Wade Veatch Leelanau’s Ice Age history is on full display in the Lighthouse West Natural Area. This 42-acre conservation area, with 640 feet of cobble strewn shoreline along Lake Michigan, is on the tip of the Leelanau Peninsula.  It is near Leelanau State Park, which has a lighthouse. This preserve, although it has “lighthouse” in its name, does not have one. The Leelanau Conservancy e…

By Steven Wade Veatch On a fateful Wednesday, July 15, 1914, 13-year-old John F. Bowen visited his friends at the Kilpatrick Ranch near Gillette, Colorado. It started out like any other day for John—his past behind him, his future ahead, but unlike other days, this would be his last day on Earth. Young John Bowen had lived an eventful life. He was born in Leadville on January 12, 1901, to Irish p…

By Steven Wade Veatch There are many ways to view and understand our world. Science provides theories, psychology probes human nature, philosophy ponders reality, religion shapes faith, and literature offers insight. Poetry, on the other hand, shines light into our lives, and reveals essential truths. Poetry inspires me; it is one way I experience and know the world. Poetry ’ s charged words make…

By Steven Wade Veatch My elementary school opened in 1957, three years after I was born, with over 600 students attending. With a magnificent view of Pikes Peak from its front yard, the grade school was named for Katharine Lee Bates, the famous author of America the Beautiful. Bates Elementary School remained open for 56 years, a pillar in the Cragmoor subdivision of Colorado Springs. Figure 1. A…