Wichita rocks

Blog for April 11, 2015

At  one of our times at the Visitor's  Center we noticed a schedule of programs presented by an active Friends of Wichita group. The program on three Saturdays in April (each month the programs are on a different topic - wildflowers, history, elk, etc.) was on the geology of the Refuge. Wow! How lucky could we get!!

We signed up, of course, but Saturday morning we were awoken at 7 a.m. by a loud thunderstorm. We headed over to the Visitor's Center in the rain and everyone going on the tour got on the bus.

This is our tour guide, Helen Riley. She is a retired Kindergarten teacher with a love of geology. On the tour was a retired geologist, Al Bennett, who also contributed to the presentation. Here Helen is pointing out that we can see the sedimentary rock on the top and beneath it is the granite. 95% of the Refuge is igneous rock, either granite or gabbro.

It was still lightly raining at our first two or three stops.

Just before the Oklahoma land rush in July 1901, the land of the Refuge was set aside as a game preserve. In 1905 Theodore Roosevelt changed it to a Refuge. Between 1901 and 1905 miners were free to dig for gold. None was found but here is the remains of a shaft. 

This location was once a granite quarry. We came here to see a "dike", the black perpendicular stripe in the side of the cliff, which is an igneous intrusion into pre-existing rock.

Here Al is talking about the dike.

Helen pointing out the rhyolite dike which is horizontal at this point. 

At the base of Mt. Scott.

Towards the end of the tour we went to the base of Little Baldy and on the trail that we took a few days ago. Here Helen has brought us to two slabs of gabbro.

It has happened again!! Ta da! - Rhode Island connection!. We were chatting on the bus between stops and someone asked us where we were from. When we said Providence, Rhode Island, this man, sitting across from us, said, "I grew up in Pawtucket." This is John Pereira. He joined the service, not the Navy, and traveled around. He retired from the service, went to law school and practiced law in Lawton for about 15 years. His wife is from the Black Hills in South Dakota so he was able to give us some good ideas about what to see and do when we get there. We just love making these connections!!

In the afternoon it cleared up and we took a series of three short hikes. This is Buford Lake...

and Post Oak Lake.