Spencer's cave :an Adirondack anomaly
Loading...
Date
1986
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
The Ohio State University
Abstract
This Report is a morphological and mineralogical survey of Spencer's Cave in Essex County, New York. Discovered in 1978 by Ranger Spencer Cram of the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC), this small cave is situated in a geologically complex area of anorthosites, syenites, gneisses, calc-silicates, and metasediments. Spencer's Cave is a water carved feature in a body of white, green, or blue marble containing small amounts of augite, magnetite, and many diverse members of the diopside-hedenbergite solid solution series. The rocks surrounding the marble body are garnetiferous and represent the effects of regional and contact metamorphism, assimilation, and metasomatism. Formation of the cave was probably controlled by differential dissolution along a zone of fracture in Grenville metasediments.