Field Trip - Perspectives of a New Member

Many thanks to new club member Jenell Scherbel, for her photos and description of a recent field trip to the Caballo Hills, east of Hatch, New Mexico.    Members met up at the Walmart parking lot in Silver City.  According to Jenell, "some of us left our cars there and got rides with peoole in SUVs and trucks (hopefully, with spare tires!)."  

Jenell reports " we crossed I-25 to get to a dirt road that led us first to an area of small hills that had glacier-polished stones (small ones) just handy to pick up off the sandy ground.  After about an hour at that location, we drove on further down the dirt road past a sand and gravel company location to the Caballo Hills area.  I think it was the site of an old barite mine. 

The caravan of cars stopped at that second location.  There were huge boulders all along that road near the stop, all glistening with amazing colors and crystals.  People set off on their own down ravines and up hills.  Jeannine found one rock that had nice large crystals-within-crystals.  There was one boulder-sized rock that was solid quartz. Everyone had a great time and some people picked up huge slabs to cart home."

Here are a few of Jenell's photos: 

Where does Silver City get it's minerals?

A great program was held at last week's club meeting by Ron Pharr that included a discussion of the formation and evolution of the geology of the region. Here's a photo taken after the program with our speaker and retired geology professor Jack Cunningham.