This quarry is the only known culturally utilized source for "Grand Meadow Chert (GMC)," a distinctive hard, gray stone used by Native Americans to make many everyday tools including spear points, arrowheads, drills, awls, knives, and hide scrapers.

Visitors can enjoy the serenity of the park-like trail in the woods, or experience a self-guided walking tour with signage in English and Dakota that explains its historic and cultural significance.

Aug 6, 2024 · The red layers are jasper; the white, chert (mostly quartz); and the black are iron-bearing minerals, mostly magnetite (magnetic) and hematite (nonmagnetic). An example of this type of rock can be seen at Soudan Underground Mine State Park.

The Gunflint chert (1.88 Ga [1]) is a sequence of banded iron formation rocks that are exposed in the Gunflint Range of northern Minnesota and northwestern Ontario along the north shore of Lake Superior.

Chert is a biochemical sedimentary rock made from microcrystalline quartz. It is very hard – registering a 7 on the Mohs hardness scale, and displays conchoidal fracturing. Chert can almost any color, but is usually gray, brown, red, or green. It has many subvarieties including flint, jasper, agate, and onyx.

Mar 11, 2021 · The Grand Meadow Chert Quarry (GMC Quarry) is the source of an exceptionally high-quality and distinctive chert used for making stone tools, employed over many millennia in the Upper Midwest.

Three recent articles* in Vol. 77 of The Minnesota Archaeologist introduced the Grand Meadow Chert Quarry in southeastern Minnesota, and traced the use and impact of the significant gray chert that was extracted from that site over thousands of years.

Dec 10, 2020 · Now the Mower County Historical Society in Austin is launching a multi-year project to develop the archaeological site known as the Grand Meadow Chert Quarry thanks to a $59,000 grant from the Minnesota Historical Society.

around 1400 CE, the Grand Meadow Chert Quarry was the most important place in southeastern MN and possibly the whole state, at the time. Families and entire villages came here for the stone called “chert” (flint is a type of chert), used for everyday tools including awls, hide scrapers, spear points, and arrowheads.

Mar 2, 2021 · The Grand Meadow Chert Quarry (GMC Quarry) is the source of an exceptionally high-quality and distinctive chert used for making stone tools, employed over many millennia in the Upper Midwest.