The Geologic Story of Glacier National ParkDyson, James L. (James Lindsay)
Science
The Geologic Story of Glacier National Park
Dyson, James L. (James Lindsay)
Geology -- Montana -- Glacier National Park; Glacier National Park (Mont.)
These beds have the same bright red color as those of the Grinnell.
However, because they are the youngest rocks of the Belt series they
outcrop only on a few mountaintops, and inasmuch as these are mainly in
the northwest part of the park, comparatively few people have noticed
this formation. Visitors to Cameron Lake in Waterton Lakes National Park
can see it in the red north wall of Mount Custer. The mountains around
colorful Boulder Pass and Hole-in-the-Wall Basin are likewise composed
of it.
Within the rocks of this formation there is a great abundance of small
cubes believed to be casts of salt crystals which formed when the
sediments were accumulating. Their presence indicates an arid climate
and intensive evaporation of the sea, similar to the condition at Great
Salt Lake today.
Igneous Rocks of the Belt Series
Not all of Glacier Park’s rocks accumulated slowly and quietly as
sediment in a body of water. At many places, interbedded with and
cutting across the sediments, there are bodies of igneous rock which
reached their present position in the form of hot molten material forced
up from deep within the crust.
[Illustration: COLUMNAR SECTION OF BELT ROCKS]
PROTEROZOIC
KINTLA 860′+ Red argillite
SHEPARD 600′ Buff limestone
PURCELL 250′ Black lava
SIYEH 4000′ Dark diorite bordered by white altered
limestone
Blue limestone. Weathers buff
GRINNELL 1600-3000′ Red argillite and white quartzite
APPEKUNNY 2500′± Green argillite. Some white quartzite
ALTYN 2300′± Gray limestone. Weathers buff
PURCELL LAVA.
Soon after the youngest layers of Siyeh limestone had accumulated on the
floor of the sea and while they were still under water, a mass of molten
rock was squeezed up from far below and extruded in the form of a
submarine lava flow over the recently accumulated sediments. Several
times this lava poured out forming a total thickness varying between 50
and 275 feet. One of the best exposures is on the west side of
Swiftcurrent Pass and in Granite Park just west and northwest of the
chalet. In fact it is this lava flow which gives the name, albeit
wrongly, to Granite Park. The material of the flow is very fine-grained
and dark (basic), in contrast to the light color and coarse grain of
granite. Nonetheless, many prospectors are wont to call every igneous
rock, regardless of its composition, a granite. A number of ellipsoidal
structures (“pillows”) up to two feet in diameter within this lava
indicate that it was extruded under water. The Purcell is thickest in
the vicinity of Boulder Pass, where the trail traverses its ropy and
stringy surface for a distance of several hundred yards.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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