Rocks & Minerals of Wisconsin, Illinois & Iowa: A Field Guide to the Badger, Prairie & Hawkeye States

by Dan R. Lynch, Bob Lynch

Overview

Get this must-have guide for Wisconsin, Illinois, and Iowa, featuring full-color photographs and information to help you identify rocks and minerals.

Identify and collect rocks and minerals with the perfect guide to the Heartland. With this famous field guide by Dan R. Lynch and Bob Lynch, field identification is simple and informative. The book features comprehensive entries for 96 rocks and minerals, from common rocks to rare finds. That means you’re more likely to identify what you’ve found. The authors know rocks and took their own full-color photographs to depict the detail needed for identification—no more guessing from line drawings. The field guide’s easy-to-use format helps you to quickly find what you need to know and where to look.

Inside you’ll find:

• 96 specimens: Only Wisconsin, Illinois, and Iowa rocks and minerals
• Quick Identification Guide: Identify rocks and minerals by color and common characteristics
• Range/occurrence maps: See where each specimen is commonly found
• Professional photos: Crisp, stunning images

Rocks & Minerals of Wisconsin, Illinois & Iowa includes beautiful photography, relevant information, and the authors’ expert insights. With this book in hand, identifying and collecting is fun and informative!

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781591934516
Publisher:	Adventure Publications, Incorporated
Publication date:	04/20/2015
Series:	Rocks & Minerals Identification Guides
Pages:	244
Sales rank:	410,385
Product dimensions:	4.40(w) x 5.90(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Dan R. Lynch has a degree in graphic design with emphasis on photography from the University of Minnesota Duluth. But before his love of the arts came a passion for rocks and minerals, developed during his lifetime growing up in his parents’ rock shop in Two Harbors, Minnesota. Combining the two aspects of his life seemed a natural choice and he enjoys researching, writing about, and taking photographs of rocks and minerals. Working with his father, Bob Lynch, a respected veteran of Lake Superior’s agate-collecting community, Dan spearheads their series of rock and mineral field guides—definitive guidebooks that help amateurs “decode” the complexities of geology and mineralogy. He also takes special care to ensure that his photographs compliment the text and always represent each rock or mineral exactly as it appears in person. He currently works as a writer and photographer in Madison, Wisconsin, with his beautiful wife, Julie. Bob Lynch is a lapidary and jeweler living and working in Two Harbors, Minnesota. He has been cutting and polishing rocks and minerals since 1973, when he desired more variation in gemstones for his work with jewelry. When he moved from Douglas, Arizona, to Two Harbors in 1982, his eyes were opened to Lake Superior’s entirely new world of minerals. In 1992, Bob and his wife Nancy, whom he taught the art of jewelry making, acquired Agate City Rock Shop, a family business founded by Nancy’s grandfather, Art Rafn, in 1962. Since the shop’s revitalization, Bob has made a name for himself as a highly acclaimed agate polisher and as an expert resource for curious collectors seeking advice. Now, the two jewelers keep Agate City Rocks and Gifts open year-round and are the leading source for Lake Superior agates, with more on display and for sale than any other shop in the country.

Read an Excerpt

Quartz

Hardness: 7 Streak: White

Environment: All environments

What to look for: Light-colored, translucent, glassy and very hard six-sided crystals; also found as masses, veins, or river pebbles

Size: Crystals can be up to several inches; masses can be any size

Color: Colorless to white when pure; often stained yellow to brown, more rarely purple, dark gray, or reddish

Occurrence: Very common

Notes: Quartz is the most abundant mineral in the earth’s crust and the first mineral all new collectors should study. It consists entirely of silica, the silicon- and oxygen-bearing compound that helps form hundreds of other minerals. Most abundant as a component of rocks, it often appears in uninteresting white masses in coarse-grained rocks such as granite or as the microscopic grains that make up chert (page 79). Nonetheless, crystals aren’t rare and often appear as elongated hexagonal (six-sided) prisms ending in a point. Crusts or cavity-linings of many tiny intergrown quartz crystals are also common in the region; such crusts are called druzy quartz. White water-worn pebbles and chunky, coarse masses of quartz are found most anywhere, often buried in glacial till (gravel). All quartz is easy to identify, thanks to its distinctive high hardness, translucency, and conchoidal fracture (when struck, circular cracks appear).

Where to Look: Quartz is found anywhere throughout the region, especially as worn pebbles. The Mississippi River cuts through areas rich with limestone that yield cavities and geodes lined with quartz. Look in southern Wisconsin near Prairie du Chien, in Iowa near Keokuk, and around Hamilton in Illinois. The Lake Superior shore and granite quarries near Wausau, Wisconsin, also produce fine crystals.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Important Terms and Definitions

A Brief Overview of the Region’s Geology

Precautions and Preparations

Dangerous Minerals and Protected Fossils

Hardness and Streak

The Mohs Hardness Scale

Quick Identification Guide

Sample Page

Rocks and Minerals Found in the Region

Glossary

Regional Rock Shops and Museums

Bibliography and Recommended Reading

Index

About the Authors