PRE-CONFERENCE TRIPS

Caravan across the battlefield to sites that span the three days of the Battle of Gettysburg to compare present day views to what it looked like immediately or several years following the battle. The trip will incorporate geology, battlefield relics, and lesser-known facts about the Gettysburg Campaign. A short guidebook will be made available.

Take a carpool tour of several karst landscapes near Shippensburg, Pennsylvania with stops at Cleversburg Sink, Den Cave, and Carnegie Cave which are developed on gently dipping Cambrian limestone and calcareous shale. BYO-Lunch will be at Dykeman Spring, a large volume spring controlled by the Dykeman Fault. A tour of Black-Coffey, formerly Baker Caverns, which is developed in near vertical beds of Ordovician limestone, will round out the day. Learn about current geophysical research used to delineate known and previously unknown cave passages and assess the fault location, further refining the geologic maps. Compare cave and sinkhole development in gently vs steeply dipping beds in an area of expanding urbanization. We will discuss some of the challenges that have arisen due to increased impermeable surfaces on karst landscapes. There will be short, steep walks, and steps, though generally we rate this an easy day. You will not get particularly muddy and there is no crawling or squeezing.

The Specialty Granules quarry is the largest exposure of the Catoctin metabasalts and metarhyolites in South Mountain. Metabasalts are used to produce different colored roofing shingle granules and road ballast. The metarhyolites are produced for road use. The geology and relationships of these rocks will be examined.