Roadside Geology of Alabama

About this book

Alabama is the only place on Earth where a person has been injured by a meteorite. Another impact, this one about 80 million years ago, left the 5-mile-wide Wetumpka impact crater in the centre of the state. Alabama's world-class geology, nearly as famous as its music, includes tracks of early amphibians and reptiles, fossilized bird feathers, and 2-billion-year-old mineral grains eroded from rocks now found in Africa. And lest you think Alabama is just alligator swamps and estuary mud, you can view Little River Canyon, in places 600 feet deep, atop Lookout Mountain, a broad plateau incised by waterfall-laced rivers at the southern end of the Appalachian Mountains.

The authors intertwine the geology with cultural stories, legends, and history to paint an enjoyable picture of how Alabama and its rocks came to be. For example, Tannehill Ironworks and iron mines in Red Mountain Park and Ruffner Mountain Nature Preserve document Birmingham's industrial birth as the source of iron for the Confederacy. Buildings at Cheaha State Park in the Talladega Mountains were constructed by the Civilian Conservation Corps using blocks of locally quarried Cheaha Quartzite. Native Americans chiselled stone axes out of the Hillabee greenstone, one of Alabama's ancient volcanic rocks. With Roadside Geology of Alabama as your guide, find caverns in fossil-rich limestone, shark teeth in the shifting sands of the Gulf Coast, and rocky outcrops in Muscle Shoals along the banks of the Tennessee River, known to Native Americans as the "singing river".

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Biography

Mark Steltenpohl is an emeritus professor at Auburn University with more than 40 years of experience as a field geologist. His interest in Alabama geology began while earning his BS and MS degrees at the University of Alabama. After getting his doctorate from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, he worked as a field geologist for 3 years at the Geological Survey of Alabama. Then he was hired by Auburn University, where he was a professor for 32 years. His field research focuses on the geology of Alabama but includes work in Arctic Scandinavia, Poland, and East Greenland.

Laura Steltenpohl taught science for 20 years at Auburn High School, mostly chemistry, physics, and earth science. She earned her MA in secondary science from the University of Alabama after getting degrees in geology at Vanderbilt University (BS) and the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill (MS). Her research focused on understanding the origin of alkaline granites using geochemical analyses. Her non-educational work experience includes five years as a project scientist with an environmental consulting firm.