20th
September
2007
GeoChallenge #3
posted in GSCI340, GeoChallenge |The Challenge: E-mail me (rschott@fhsu.edu) a Google Earth placemark of the place where you grew up. In the description box of the placemark you should write up a paragraph about the geology of your hometown, describing the age and rock type of the bedrock in the area at a minimum. If you need to find out about the geology of your hometown you should consult the Geologic Map of Kansas in 213 Tomanek Hall, the Kansas Geological Survey’s website, or consult with me if you grew up somewhere other than Kansas.
[…] of GeoChallenges can be completed online in a reasonable amount of time (e.g., GeoChallenges #2, #3, and […]
I am from Meade Kansas in Meade county, which is in the southwest part of the state. I live about 15 miles south of town and where my house sits I am about 7-8 miles from oklahoma and about 100 miles from Colorado give or take. The county consists primarily of Loess (Q1) and where my house sits it consists of Alluvium (QaL2) and ogallah Fm (T0). The scenery consists of dense crop land in areas and wide spreading pastures in others with reletively large sloping hills with jagged and steep draws, and box canyons running through them from years of water erosion
Just in case for some reason the e-mails did not go through, here are the 2 descriptions I sent in response to this geo challenge.
Elk Falls, Kansas
There are a couple of places I actually consider myself to have grown up in, but Elk Falls, Kansas in the southeastern part of the state is the first of the 2. It is a very small town with a population under 300 people. When I lived there the population was closer to 100. The town and surrounding area is made up mostly of sandstone dating to the Pennslvanian period. The town, although not well known over all, is best known for 2 particular related features. That would be a waterfall on the eastern edge of the town, accompanied by the great iron bridge built over 100 years ago and has been restored at least twice in my lifetime. The waterfall is a part of the Elk River which floods over at least once a year during the spring. Usually the water doesn’t go far but I remember one year when it was particullarly bad. When I lived in Elk Falls, we were just across the road and a short path walk to the river. That year when the river flooded, our mailbox was submerged as well as a good amount of the road. Luckily our house itself was built into a hill, way above.
Coffeyville, Kansas
As I mentioned in the description I gave for Elk Falls, there are actually 2 places I consider myself to have grown up in and Coffeyville, Kansas is the second. Coffeyville is in the same general area of the state as Elk Falls (southeast corner) but is about and hours drive southeast of it on the Kansas/Oklahoma border. There is actually another town just south of it in Oklahoma called South Coffeyville. Coffeyville like Elk Falls has rock dating from the pennslyvanian period consisting of mostly limestone with some shale etc. Coffeyville is best known as the place where the Dalton Gang met their demise while attempting to rob 2 banks at once. But in more recent history, and something that is a lot more geologically related, in July of 2007 the eastern third of the town was flooded. Many people lost their homes but what made it even worse was the oil that got mixed in with the water from the local refinery that happened to be on that side of the town. Months of cleanup followed and at one point there was a boil order on all drinking water. Fortunatlly my family lives on the west side of town so they were not overlly effected by it.