(Courtesy Dr. Abbott)<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\nFocusing on the past 126 million years, Dr. Abbott has divided history of the park into four stages:<\/p>\n
126 to 90 million years ago, magma is injected above and below ground-building mountains.<\/p>\n
90 to 57 million years ago, erosion carves a new and lower landscape.<\/p>\n
57 to 34 million years ago, the park is literally buried by a massive alluvial fan built of gravels delivered by a 225-mile-long river.<\/p>\n
34 million years ago to now, erosion is exposing parts of the once-buried landscape as well as eroding new topography.<\/p>\n
With master\u2019s and doctorate degrees in geology, Dr. Abbott is well-equipped to understand the history in rocks.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy specialization is reading the history in sedimentary rocks,\u201d said Dr. Abbott, who was born and grew up in San Diego and graduated from Hoover High School.<\/p>\n
![\"Rocks](\"data:image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==\")
For his Ph.D. dissertation, he wrote about the geologic history of the Edwards Limestone Aquifer, which supplies the water needs of the city of San Antonio. Existing within the Balcones fault zone, the aquifer has a 100-million-year history involving stops, starts and pauses, Abbott explained.<\/p>\n
Dr. Abbott had first become interested in geology in courses taught by Baylor Brooks at San Diego State College.<\/p>\n
\u201cI adopted geology as my major at the start of my junior year. The appeal of geology is that it combines the best of both arts and sciences. You need artistic creativity first, but then you can apply the rigor of the sciences to see how close to the truth you can get,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Dr. Abbott wanted to pass along the new data and esoteric understanding of the park to as many people as possible.<\/p>\n
\u201cI call it legacy writing,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The book is not his first on geology. He wrote another excellent tome on San Diego geography, \u201cThe Rise and Fall of San Diego.\u201d He also wrote \u201cThe Balcones Escarpment,\u201d a popular book about a Texas geologic formation formed along the fault of the same name running from the southwest to the northeast portions of Texas.<\/p>\n
Here in San Diego, Mission Trails Regional Park is a wealth of geologic formation and writing in the rocks of history.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are truly fortunate to have a huge wilderness park within the city limits of one of the largest cities in the United States,\u201d Dr. Abbott said.<\/p>\n
But until now, the geologic history of the park had not been studied together as a whole. Dr. Abbott\u2019s book has made that knowledge available, and signage within the park will come soon.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not so much that Mission Trails Park contains things that are different, but that it has good examples that can be readily accessed and enjoyed in a park that must remain wilderness for future generations,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
It was a pleasant journey for Dr. Abbott to write \u201cGeology \u2013 Mission Trails Park.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI wrote it while working on other projects. Since much of the data and geologic understanding in the book are brand new, the writing was interspersed with many hiking trips to \u2018look and learn,\u2019\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The \u201clook and learn\u201d hikes are detailed within the book.<\/p>\n
Some examples are taking the 5-Peak Challenge, climbing each peak. The rocks are former magmas that crystallized about 1.5 miles deep, sometime between 118 to 104 million years ago.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe views are great, and your health will improve,\u201d quipped Dr. Abbott.<\/p>\n
At the Visitor Center Loop Trail, you can see a fault exposed in a cutback of the San Diego River. On the south side of the fault are 126-million-year-old volcanic rocks; on the north side are 113-million-year-old plutonic rocks.<\/p>\n
On the other end of the park from Clairemont Mesa Drive, walk through whitish-color Eocene sedimentary rocks about 42 million years old.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey contain the whitish mineral precipitate caliche which tells us about the climate of its time,\u201d said Dr. Abbott.<\/p>\n
Simply walking or driving through Mission Gorge, \u201cour own little Yosemite Valley,\u201d Dr. Abbott said, you can see the San Diego River cutting down through high mountains. Want to know how?<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s in the book,\u201d Dr. Abbott said.<\/p>\n
Geologic curiosities surround Lake Murray, as well, in its Eocene-age conglomerate.<\/p>\n
\u201cLook at the reddish-purplish cobbles and boulders of volcanic rock brought from mainland Mexico by a huge river. How did the river get across the Gulf of California?<\/p>\n
\u201cThe answer is in the book,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The book is good for all ages, written for the general public. \u201cIt presents real geologic knowledge. It probably should be thought of as an accessible textbook\u2014put some effort into reading it and you will learn new things,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Dr. Abbott would like to thank David Cooksy for his many photographs in the book. Steve Boudreau, Monte Marshall and Abbott also have some of their photographs in the book. Clever drawings and cartoons by geologist Jake Washburn as well as computer illustrations and art by geologist Eugenia Sangines make the book even more readable.<\/p>\n
Dr. Abbott has served on the board of directors for the Mission Trails Regional Park Foundation and currently serves as an advisor. His anticipated book is available exclusively at the Visitor Center gift shop with proceeds benefitting the Mission Trails Regional Park Foundation.<\/p>\n
\u2014 Cynthia Roberts is a San Diego-based freelance writer. Reach her at c1g2robertson@gmail.com<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Por Cynthia Robertson<\/p>","protected":false},"author":749,"featured_media":230051,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"11558","_seopress_titles_title":"Rocks of ages","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11549,11547,11558,11551,11550],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-230050","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts-entertainment","category-features","category-mission-times-courier","category-news","category-top-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230050","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/749"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=230050"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230050\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/230051"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=230050"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=230050"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=230050"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Rocks](\"https:\/\/missiontimescourier.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/Dr.-Pat-Abbott2c-a-professor-emeritus2c-author-and-hiker2c-enjoys-rock-climbing.jpg\")
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