Oakland Geology

Recent work in far east Piedmont has exposed some excellent bedrock worth a close inspection. Because the town government won’t put an interpretive sign there, this post will have to do.

To my knowledge, there are only two sites of powerline towers in Piedmont, one at the mouth of Estates Drive and the other at 298 St. James Drive, near Park Boulevard. Last year the power company replaced the latter pair with shiny new towers, and as part of the work it cleared the roadcut of its cover of acacia trees (Google Maps shows the site as a thicket going back to 2007). Shortly afterward I discovered it and had high hopes, though it wasn’t much to look at in late October.

By January, the exposure had been stripped of loose rock. Already it was clear that it would be a showcase of slickensides.

By August, a strong concrete wall had been put in place and landscape plantings made.

The slickensides turned out to be fabulous. These are the polished marks made as movement along faults grinds rocks against each other.

And here’s a closeup.

Also visible is evidence of brecciation, the geologist’s word for shattering rocks and cementing the pieces together.

The rock here is sandstone of the Franciscan Complex, specifically part of the Novato Quarry nappe. This is a thick slice of fine-grained sandstone that was laid down off the ancient coast of California, then shoved against the continent’s edge and pulled apart into lumps by the San Andreas fault system. A bunch of it underlies Marin County, and more makes up Point Richmond and El Cerrito as well as Piedmont and points south. This tectonic history probably accounts for the wear and tear visible in the roadcut.

When I visited the roadcut again last week, I annotated and recorded the site in the ROCKD smartphone app and announced it on Twitter. I’m trying out the app just for fun as a way to make some of my observations public. I’m looking at other apps for more rigorous mapping purposes.

This entry was posted on 11 December 2017 at 8:02 am and is filed under Franciscan rocks. 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.