To enhance outdoor recreation and environmental education in Connecticut, the State Geological Survey of DEEP is preparing short geological reports for Connecticut State Parks. www.ct.gov/deep/geologystateparks

Connecticut Survey volunteer Randolph Steinen (retired UConn professor), working with other Survey personnel, college students, and local geologists, has written reports for seven state parks and is conducting field work for two others.  Reports for Mansfield Hollow State Park, Osborndale State Park, Silver Sands State Park, Sleeping Giant State Park and West Rock State Park are in edit, for online publication this year.  Reports for Bolton Notch State Park and Devil’s Hopyard State Park are written but require further illustration.  Field work is under way at Penwood State Park and Rocky Glen State Park. 
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Input from Society members regarding park selection for new or updated geologic reports is welcome.  Also, please contact the State Survey if you are interested in being part of the field team.  Weekend field work can be arranged. Contact [email protected]

EarthCaches also exist for many state park locations that do not have a park geologic report.  EarthCaches are administered by the Geological Society of America as a special part of the Geocache system.  Connecticut Geological Survey EarthCaches http://www.depdata.ct.gov/maps/earthcache/earthcachemap.htm

During the winter of 2009-2010 a Home Depot store was constructed at a site on state Route 111 in northern Trumbull (aka Long Hill).  This site initially saw some grading and rock removal in the 1990s for a planned retail outlet known as Old Mine Plaza in allusion to the adjacent Old Mine Park.  However, no construction was ever done and it sat idle until the Home Depot construction. 

With its proximity to Old Mine Park, a place famous for its topaz and fluorite-rich hydrothermal veins and amphibolite-hosted scheelite and ferberite pseudomorphs thereof, the defunct plaza and the new Home Depot construction were a magnet for mineral collecting.  The bedrock is mostly amphibolite, with some marble, mapped as the Silurian basal member of the Silurian-Devonian The Straits Schist, which are locally very well exposed.  There was generally little overburden of Pleistocene age on the site. 
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However, during the Home Depot construction a large, underground storm water storage gallery was constructed by blasting a chamber into the bedrock.  This was presumably done because of the limited land available for a surface retention basin, so it was placed under the parking lot by filling the space with nested, hollow concrete structures that could support the overlying parking (see Figure 1).  The walls of the gallery exposed mostly amphibolite bedrock, but the southeast corner revealed a layer of overlying glacial till.