Guidebook 9. Field Trip Guidebook for Stratigraphy, Structure and Mineral Resources of East-Central Minnesota

Abstract

Early in the 20th century, east-central Minnesota became the source of appreciable quantities of iron and ferromanganese, and even earlier, the source of a variety of granite products (Morey, 1977). Because of the obvious economic importance of the commodities to the state, most of the geologic work in east-central Minnesota focused on the Cuyuna iron-mining district or on the St. Cloud area where there are numerous granite quarries. Less attention was given to the geology of other parts of east-central Minnesota and to the possible presence of other mineral resources. This was true mainly because a fairly ubiquitous mantle of Quaternary materials made it difficult, time consuming and expensive for a company to establish the basic geologic information necessary to a successful exploration program. However, recent geologic work (Morey, 1978) has led to the recognition of several geologic environments that are similar to mineral-producing districts elsewhere in the world (Morey, 1977). Although these studies have shown that a variety of mineral occurrences may exist, most attention to date has focused on environments that may contain uranium. This road log starts at the Minnesota-Wisconsin border along the st. Louis River near Fond du Lac, the westernmost suburb of Duluth, Minnesota, and terminates near Sturgeon Lake on U.S. Interstate Highway 35 some 50 miles southwest of Duluth. Note that the mileages in this road log are approximate.