Field Trips

Picture 7. Repairs to right non-overflow section of Lake Roland Dam

The Following Aesthetic Considerations Were Factored into the Dam’s Rehabilitation:

Gatehouse restored to its 1861 condition and appearance. Formliners were used to replicate the pattern and texture of original stones used in building dams. To achieve the match, four original stones were removed and used to make molds for fabricating the Formliners. Sidewalks/new observation decks were stamped with slate patterns and chemically stained gray. Replication of the original cast iron handrail end post casting. Complete reconstruction of a stone wall removed for construction access. Construction of an observation deck on top of the south emergency spillway near the gatehouse. Resetting the dam’s original builder’s stone on the new observation deck. Use of a natural rock formation exposed by construction as an energy dissipator for the north emergency spillway. The city was able to make improvements to the park’s entrance road, picnic area below the dam, landscaping, and parking areas. A new environmental center has recently been constructed in the park for children.

Present Condition

The Lake Roland Dam is now used for recreational purposes to feed Gwynns Falls where the kayak/canoe races and annual events are held throughout spring and summer seasons. Fishing and boating activities are also predominant on the lake. Lake Roland Park and the newly constructed nature center educates children about the birds and wild animals that frequent the park. For more information, please visit: https://www.lakeroland.org/

Acknowledgments

Baltimore County, Maryland – (present owner); and City of Baltimore, Maryland – (past owner).

Author’s Information

Visty P. Dalal, MSc (Tech), MS, Sr. Engineering Geologist, Dam Safety Program, Maryland, Department of the Environment, 1800 Washington Blvd, Baltimore, MD 21230, (410) 537-3655 (O); (443) 271-8122 (C), Visty.dalal@maryland.gov

Call for Photos from the Field…

Working on a project that has some great visuals but isn’t ready or big enough to warrant a technical paper? We’d love to share those visuals with our readers.

Please submit a high-resolution photo (at least 300dpi at 3.657” [1100 pixels] wide for a onecolumn photo. If you’re taking a photo with a phone, email us your highest quality or “original.” A larger file— 300dpi at 7.5”—is always better as it gives us more options. You could even make the cover!

In addition to the photo, please include a brief caption describing the site and name of the project. And don’t forget to include a credit for the photographer.

We can’t guarantee you will get into an issue as photos will be published “as space allows.”

Southern Nevada Field Trip to Sand Dike Near Anniversary Narrows

Ann Backstrom

Ann Backstrom is a Geological Engineer, recently retired from a 30-year career with Kleinfelder, Inc., in Southern Nevada. She and her husband divide their time between Las Vegas, NV and Seattle, WA.

morning drive through the park. In order to boost Chapter membership, all field trips are free to members and $20 to non-members. Covid safety protocols were followed. Professor Rowland commenced the morning’s activities with a short trailside discussion of the geologic setting and stratigraphy of the Miocene Bitter Ridge Limestone Member of the Horse Spring Formation, a non-marine limestone deposited following the onset of tertiary crustal extension in the Lake Mead Region. Although body fossils are not associated with the Horse Spring Formation, fossilized mammal tracks have been aturday morning, January 30, 2021, sixteen members and friends of the Southern Nevada Chapter of the AEG met for a half-day field trip to an unusual geologic feature in S found. On-going graduate research of canid tracks east of the field trip locale provide evidence of the transition between solitary ambush hunting to pack-hunting behaviors. A half-mile hike up Lovell Wash followed, affording spectacscenic Lovell Wash at the southern edge of the Muddy Moun- ular views of tilted layers of the thinly-bedded Bitter Ridge limetains, east of Las Vegas, Nevada. The feature is interpreted as stone. Numerous stops were made to observe and discuss a one-meter-wide sand dike cutting Miocene strata due to lique- microbial and other depositional as well as post-depositional faction caused by an earthquake. The field trip was led by features, including stromatolitic layering, salt “tepee” struc-

Chapter Chair and retired seismologist Jerry King, retired Uni- tures, and evidence of both large and small-scale, soft sediversity of Nevada Las Vegas Geology Professor Steve Rowland, ment deformation. The “down-section” hiking route also took and Chapter Vice-Chair and semi-retired hydrogeologist Nick the group past the historic Anniversary Mine, where the altered

Saines. Although just outside the northern boundary of Lake borax mineral colemanite was mined in the Horse Spring

Mead Recreation Area, the site was accessed by a scenic Formation in the 1920s.