Four Corners Focus
Rock On: Passion for geology and a cool historic train!
This month I have the pleasure of introducing Nicole Clary as a guest writer for the May essay. Nicole is a major in Geology at Fort Lewis College. She is also currently in my senior research class and is interning with Nevada Gold Mines this summer. I made an offer to all of the students to write an essay for the newsletter to get more practice and write about something fun and interesting. So, I hope you enjoy Nicole’s contribution.
My name is Nicole Clary and I moved here to Durango, Colorado from Ball Ground, Georgia about a year ago. I am currently a senior at Fort Lewis College and am majoring in Geology. I became a geology major after an internship I had as a stockbroker for Morgan Stanley in Connecticut a few years ago. As I was sitting in the office day after day crunching numbers, I couldn’t stop thinking about being outside. I immediately realized what my passion was, and I needed to be involved in it quickly. I returned home to Georgia and changed my major to geology.
This month I have the pleasure of introducing Nicole Clary as a guest writer for the May essay. Nicole is a major in Geology at Fort Lewis College. She is also currently in my senior research class and is interning with Nevada Gold Mines this summer. I made an offer to all of the students to write an essay for the newsletter to get more practice and write about something fun and interesting. So, I hope you enjoy Nicole’s contribution.
My name is Nicole Clary and I moved here to Durango, Colorado from Ball Ground, Georgia about a year ago. I am currently a senior at Fort Lewis College and am majoring in Geology. I became a geology major after an internship I had as a stockbroker for Morgan Stanley in Connecticut a few years ago. As I was sitting in the office day after day crunching numbers, I couldn’t stop thinking about being outside. I immediately realized what my passion was, and I needed to be involved in it quickly. I returned home to Georgia and changed my major to geology.
Nicole Clary on an outcrop.
I always found myself picking up rocks or looking at geologic features and wondering, “how in the world did that come to be?” Geology has always been intriguing to me especially since it indeed is our home. Through my college journey I have learned so much about the planet we live on and could not think of anything else in the world I would dedicate myself to. And so, I spent a couple of years studying geology in Atlanta and had to endure college through Covid-19 times. There was not a day that went by that I did not think about geology or where it would take me in life. I can remember feeling very frustrated as I had to study rocks online and look at features only in power-points. All of that changed the day that I moved to Durango and began college in the Four Corners area.
Photographs I took from Molas Pass hike south of Silverton, Colorado on October 15th, 2022.
The San Juan Mountains are known historically for mining copper, gold and silver for well over 100 years. The Durango and Silverton Narrow-Gauge Railroad has transported over $300 million in precious metals alone. The massive coal-powered locomotive uses nearly 6 tons of coal and 10.000 gallons of water to reach Silverton and back to Durango. Around the 1940s and 1950s, the train began to carry more tourists instead of hauling ore. In 1951, the train was officially designated a passenger train and not to be used for freight. The narrow-gauge railroad really began to attract people when Hollywood film studios began to use the train to film Western movies such as “Across the Wide Missouri” and “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.” People come from all around the country to take a ride back in time on this magnificent train. The sheer beauty and power of this train as it charges through the geology of the San Juan Mountains is unlike anywhere else in the world. It is safe to say I made the best choice possible to come to this region to study geology and to top it off, I get to see this awesome train every day!
Photograph of the Durango and Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad train sourced from https://www.durangotrain.com/ride-us/important-information/ .