Geology Downtown? Secrets of Building Stone in a Modern City

[@shawnwillsey]

Please LIKE and SUBSCRIBE. I also appreciate your continual support of these geology education videos. To do so, click on the "Thanks" button just above (right of Download button) or by going here: www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=EWUSLG3GBS5W8 Or: www.buymeacoffee.com/shawnwillsey

[@robertb6889]

My 3x great grandpa quarried sandstone at Table Rock while serving in the Old Idaho Penitentiary for doing time as an early Mormon polygamist after getting arrested in SE Idaho. Love to see a video on the rock from there.

[@lynnemarieallan5013]

Shawn, thank you from those of us that live here that don't take the time to see the beauty we have so close. Outstanding presentation.

[@llanitedave]

Back way before KZbin, I wrote a forum essay on Shopping Mall geology. It really is amazing how much information you can get from "decorative stone."

[@DaveBartholomew-uf6sm]

I will never look at a building or a counter top in the same way ever again. I love it. Thanks for all you research and great presentation.

[@Steviepinhead]

Enjoyable and informative! I kept expecting Shawn to be accosted by security personnel as he hopped up on ledges or got down on all fours! 😅

[@J0hnC0ltrane]

Your description of crystal development follows along with the Geology 101 online class. Thanks for the refresher.

[@lynnemarieallan5013]

What a great walking tour for the Idaho Museum of Mining and Geology

[@geolyn]

What a coincidence! I am going on a walk round my local city next week on a 'Building Stones of Manchester' tour. I am looking forward to it.

[@mikes1345]

You started saying some of the stone might be in some of the viewers home area and I chuckled all the way to the granite from Marbles Falls, Texas. With the amount and variety of rock between our states that's quite a surprise!

[@loisrossi841]

I really appreciate those types of buildings; very interesting. Thank you.

[@YouDontKnowMeSoYouDontKnowJack]

The more of your videos I watch, the more I wonder about where I'd be now if I had stuck with studying geology in college 35 years ago.

[@skyedog24]

I have done electrical work in three of the buildings including the State House remodel.

[@Danika_Nadzan]

Geology everywhere! I see another series coming...first Random Roadcuts, now Downtown Geology... Interesting presentation, and so many cool rock types in close proximity! Thanks for the tour and all the research to put it together!

[@Stormy7573]

Yay 😊 Another one of these ! These video topics are really so interesting and just plain awesome! Thanks 🙏🏼 Add on: Ok .. I am impressed !! You can make a lesson out of anything! 👏😊

[@anitamartin953]

I certainly did enjoy!! As a person born in Boise, and having spent my formative years there, it was a wonderful visit to my roots! I will be looking for your book, Shawn!

[@quillaja]

Ha, great timing! Just yesterday I was thinking about the stone in the buildings I walked by in downtown Portland, OR, and trying to apply some of the terminology I've (barely) picked up from your videos! (of course, some was engineered "stone")

[@charleswelch249]

That's why I watch your channel. You're always looking for cool things right in front of your eyes. And I live in Southern Indiana. Limestone is very important for us. Along with coal, corn, soybeans, and hard-working men and women who keep the world going for everyone.

[@xwiick]

Thanks for all the hard work on these videos!

[@notinmanitou]

Great episode Shawn! Boise is a lovely city. You make me want to go downtown and start looking at all the old buildings.

[@shawnwillsey]

Go for it!

[@RussetPotato]

careful where you turn you might walk right into a building popping up. they are like weeds in cracks lately.

[@45KevinR]

😅Excellent work despite the wind. The new camera setup must be a monster, it's very effective. The other channels I watch had struggles with their drones all week. Headwind eating battery on the return even when they'd managed to get footage.

[@sandrine.t]

Thank you Shawn for 'resurrecting' this great video! I really enjoyed rewatching this urban geology lesson in Boise. I must say I have a soft spot for the amazing rapakivi granite from Finland :)

[@KateKressmann-Kehoe]

Very much enjoyed this! Thanks for doing.

[@raenbow66]

Just fascinating! You've re-amped my interest! I loved scouting around Boise with your book and previous video, and I took a lot of photos. The column wraps: tricky. (The capital building floors: quilting in stone.)

[@albertmorrissette3640]

magnificent tour explaining the stones and who, what, where and why.

[@bradwilliams7198]

"Boulder Batholith near Butte" has a nice ring to it!

[@nataliew8061]

Great video so interesting and informative 😊

[@swatchgirl2]

Random Roadcuts, now random buildings, I love it!

[@kellyhorton1462]

That was great. I liked the video of your walk during your earlier trip this year too.

[@marymachunis3778]

Mother Earth is amazing when creating.

[@mtcynthus]

I love looking at building stone! The research for your book really shines in this video. I’ve never seen anything like the rapakivi granite before. What is the dark, black matrix (it looks like a matrix, anyway)? Is that a hornblende?

[@DragonHeartTree]

That was really a fun video! Thanks, Shawn!

[@christopherastbury-mg2iz]

I'd love to see the security guards of these buildings watching over you.

[@paulgraham5370]

I was so exited to watch this! And at the end you mentioned Travertine which I used on a clients floor, having been in the building trades myself. Good stuff my good man.

[@LizWCraftAdd1ct]

I love gneiss, never seen it with large melts like that.

[@carloscorreia8928]

Very interesting video! Thanks!!

[@Vimby233]

Fascinating! Did a similar thing decades ago in the city I did my studies in. Turns out the fanciest stone was used on banks and jewellers, it got me a few odd looks when I was taking such an interest in their facades! :)

[@jfmezei]

Oh , and Boisé is a french term to denote : Adjective: area that is wooded. Vallon boisé : valley with trees Adjective vin boisé: a wine with a wood aroma Noun: Boisé: an area with trees (generally smaller than forest). Instead of Boyze, it is Boysay

[@RussetPotato]

les bois... "leh bwah"

[@jfmezei]

If you are ever in New York. Van Cortlandt park, there is a bike path on the old Putnam railroad right of way (goes all the way to Carmel NY) there are granite "headstones" where the builders of Grand Central Station tried different type of granite to see how they weathered and then chose one with which to build the new train station. You might have fun identifying which came from where 🙂 (and if I am ever a tour guide with you in the group, must only bring you to buildings that are 100% concrete 🙂

[@carygrant8796]

You’ve had this in the can for a while and had me wondering what was going on in Boise where it was 33C/92F today. Then the Christmas shots inside the Capitol gave it away. Last time I was there in the winter you didn’t dare walk around the grounds because they were covered with Canadian Goose droppings. It was pretty disgusting. Otherwise it is a beautiful city. My uncle when he was a kid accidently lit the hillside on fire playing with matches. Grandmother was not happy.

[@darrenmarshall2025]

Thanks!

[@douglasfinch5085]

Thank you for another great video Shawn! I was just at the now Idaho Central Arena and was very disappointed in myself as I'd left your book sitting on my night stand 😢 I'd previously read chapter two, but as I was standing there, I couldn't remember the details about the rapakivi granite. Looks like I'm going to need to get another copy, one for the night stand and one for the field.

[@PaulEdisonLahm]

Great video - best explanation of a migmatite I've heard! And excellent job sourcing the building stone which can be tricky. I do a similar tour of building stone in Portland, Oregon and would be curious how you did your research!

[@johnlord8337]

Interesting with the Milbank, South Dakota stone is that it is part of a very ancient bedrock, that once was far different landscape to what is now farmland. 100-60 million years ago, the great Western Inner Seaway sat across the entire region from the (later) Rocky Mountains and the first (most-ancient) Appalachians (and later Appalachians and Smoky Mountains). All of this was a 400+ feet deep sedimentary region, of dying diatoms and fish and .... You would not expect to see any igneous rocks in this area from that time to current. So this is bedrock that underlay that whole area of the once-two-part of proto-North America, and the North American craton (continental bedrock landmass). With later and tectonic uplift (Sioux Falls 1300 foot elevation, and more northern lands and northern states even higher elevation), the whole Midwest outflowed the sea down into the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean. Later glaciers would run over the land, and with end of the Glacial Age, the glacial melt waters would wash out the sea salts, down all of the many modern creeks, streams, and rivers of the Mississippi-Missouri watershed going down to Texas and Louisiana. So this Milbank, SD Milbank granite is older than 100 million years ago !!! Any massive erosion of the landscape, would then expose this ancient bedrock for quarrying.

[@Kgdyt468]

Very informative! I think the geologic names are far more interesting than the stone industry names.

[@Splusmer]

Hah! I just read that chapter a couple of weeks ago-no wonder when I saw it pop up in my feed I wondered if I’d already seen this video! 😂

[@garyb6219]

Downton geology? Finally!

[@Helix-ge1ld]

In Spain we called "Escayola" It is a material made of gypsum. I didn't know that the term came from italian. Great video of ornamental geology.

[@yahwea]

I would like to see secrets of stone buildings as a regular segment like road cuts is. :)

[@lauranugent1171]

My instant thought on the Baltic granite was the orbs looked like cross sections of brains. Especially the ones with the gray rings.

[@NNn-lt1rf]

Titallt love stone as a building material and yes, I have studied the surfaces for interest such as crystallinr structure, fossils, and texture to figure out what it us and where it came from. I knew some stone carvers and ket me tell you, wirking stone is cool!

[@chrissgraniteparadise2656]

This is AWESOME, and Urban geology has always been of interest to me. My channel is focused on the hundreds of tons of sink cutouts and other "scrap" from the kitchen countertop industry that I brought home over many years and built what is now Chris's Granite Paradise. Please know that I would be honored if you would like to come and do a video of similar nature here. I have several thousand stone varieties, and many of them are only known to me by industry names. I was pleased by your filming of the Rainbow Granite on that one building - I have a beautiful table of that material and now I know more about it! Meeting you under such circumstances would be a blast!

[@davec9244]

Who knew thank you

[@Helix-ge1ld]

Magnificient

[@YOICHIHAGIWARA]

ありがとうございます！

[@muzikhed]

I find it quite boggling how such huge concentrations of these rock types form to allow extraction of such large slabs of stone.

[@jfmezei]

At the end, you speak of Salem limestone with graves for lots of life forms. I assume this was mud at a time through which those life forms could dig. As a suggestion for a future course, how mud becomes rock. Would there be any traces of DNA for the critters that died in the mud and whose carcass lasted long enough for mud to turn to rock?

[@irmaoksanen6830]

The name rapakivi translates in Finnish to 'mudstone'.

[@shawnwillsey]

Cool!