Geology at the Minnesota State Fair

When I've been available, for the past few years I've worked a shift at the Geological Society of Minnesota's booth at the Minnesota State Fair. (There are state fairs and state fairs; I was there last year when they set a daily attendance record of 270,426, and yesterday was probably well over 200,000 as well.) The GSM has had a booth in the Education Building for many years, with a display of rocks and educational materials.

The GSM's booth, featuring board member Theresa.

If you'd like to try your eye, this tray has five fossils or fossil-bearing specimens, although one of them is difficult to tell from this angle.

The other tray has two stromatolitic specimens, plus (in the lower right) schist-on-a-stick. It's the Minnesota State Fair, there has to be something on a stick! The rest of the tray includes such local specialties as Ely Greenstone (#25) (if you've never been here, "Ely" is pronounce "Eelee") and 3.5-billion-year-old Morton Gneiss (#30).

Of course, the primary function of the GSM booth is to inform the public about the society itself, but we also spend a lot of time talking to visitors about the rocks and minerals of the state. Sometimes people have even asked us to identify objects in photos or hand sample. Given this is Minnesota, one of the favorite topics of conversation is agates. The state gemstone is the colorfully banded Lake Superior agate, although they certainly aren't limited to the North Shore; thanks to glaciers that moved south out of the Superior region, agates have been scattered across much of the state. The GSM booth has a few on-hand, but the DNR Building has a much larger assortment on display, including the nearly 50-pound (23-kg) "Agzilla".

"Agzilla" usually calls the Agate and Geological Center at Moose Lake State Park home. Incidentally, Moose Lake holds Agate Days annually in mid-July. Another notable geologic state park is Hill Annex Mine State Park, near Calumet, which is not only of note as an example of a Mesabi Range open-pit mine, but is also one of the best-known Cretaceous sites in Minnesota. The visiting season at the park has just ended, but the Minnesota Discovery Center in Chisholm also exhibits Cretaceous fossils from the Iron Range. A few of the fossils from Hill Annex joined the agates at the DNR building.

Plants, ammonites, bivalves, gastropods, teeth: a proper assemblage for near the eastern shore of the Western Interior Seaway.

If you're looking for upcoming geological events, October is a very good month in Minnesota. The GSM's lecture series opens in mid-September and continues into December. The Minnesota Mineral Club holds its annual show at the Armory in Cottage Grove over the third weekend in October, and over the same weekend, Whitewater State Park will be holding a "Geology Gathering", which I will be participating in on Saturday the 19th. Also, the Science Museum of Minnesota will hold an Object ID day on Saturday the 5th, and we're tentatively planning a fossil walk at Coldwater for Saturday the 12th.