Another appearance of the Morton Gneiss

Not long after I documented the tombstone at Mountain View Cemetery made of the extremely old Morton Gneiss, I spotted the same stone—four polished disks of it—flanking the entryway of a house in the Grandview neighborhood.

morton gneiss

This stuff is certainly a gift to the world. And yet just today I bent down by someone’s fence to caress a boulder of our own red chert, equally striking in its own way.

This entry was posted on 25 May 2012 at 5:53 pm and is filed under Oakland stone. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

4 Responses to “Another appearance of the Morton Gneiss”

Dennis Evansosky Says:
27 July 2012 at 12:00 pm
Hi Andrew,

I’m doing a history book about the Dimond and Fruitvale districts (it’s the fourth is a series; I done one about the Laurel District; another about Alameda and the third about the site of those great knockers, Mountain View Cemetery)
I would like to start the book with some geology. Can I get your permission to use the geology map you have posted on the blog? I would also like to use some of the information you have here (with the proper attribution,of course) and need your OK.

[Answered — Andrew]
Thomas Schenk Says:
17 January 2013 at 10:07 am
I was born in Morton, MN, the little town where that gneiss is quarried, so I enjoy seeing references to it from so far away. The saying in Morton is: “Morton: don’t take it for granite, it is really gneiss.”
lin murphy Says:
25 May 2013 at 9:45 am
hi, I now live in Colorado and part time in NH, where I’m taking a geology course at DArtmouth. Just happened to see your site. I have some of the Morton gneiss in Boulder. When I went to Iceland a few years ago, I left from Minneapolis and drove thru Morton to collect samples. I will try to have a thin section made and send you the digital pic–may take a few months.

It’s really amazing to have this slice of Archean rock.
I hadn’t know previously that it had been quarried and sent around.
dabbindan Says:
12 August 2013 at 7:19 pm
made the pilgrimage to morton july ’13. read about it 15 years ago and finally went. wonderful to see and touch knowing how old it is. and so beautiful on top of it all. i thinkg someone in town should polish some fragments and offer them for sale. going to take the fragment i found and have it worked on. i may have to polish it myself as they only work on limestone here.