Jew's Harp EarthCache
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Jew’s Harp Spring This natural spring was used to provide water in the 19th century for a nearby plantation called Orange Hall. Nothing of the house but scattered bricks remains today. The spring was carved in the 1860s, by J.E. Sherman. Mr. Sherman was a union soldier, wounded in the war. Mr. Sherman stayed at the Orange Hall Plantation during his recovery. The stone surrounding the spring is granite, Granite is a common and widely occurring type of intrusive, felsic, igneous rock. Granite has a medium to coarse texture, occasionally with some individual crystals larger than the groundmass forming a rock known as porphyry. Granites can be pink to dark gray or even black, depending on their chemistry and mineralogy. Mr. Sherman's carving, showcasing this natural spring, is quite a work of art. Water from the ground comes into a hole in the center of the circular section of the "harp". It then drains through a groove that runs from the bowl down towards the creek. The water, which flows at the rate of 3.5 gallons per minute, never overflows the sides, but keeps the bowl filled at all times. The 6-inch deep bowl is sheltered by another granite slab and is surrounded on three sides by other stones. The land the spring is located on, is now managed by the US Forest Service, and is prodominantly hardwood forest. What is a natural spring? A spring may be the result of karst topography. Where surface water has infiltrated the earth's surface (recharge area), becoming part of the area groundwater The groundwater then travels though a network of cracks and fissures, openings ranging from inter-granular spaces to large caves. The water eventually emerges from below the surface, in the form of a spring. Forcing of the spring to the surface can be the result of a confined aquifer in which the recharge area of the spring water table rests at a higher elevation than that of the outlet. Spring water forced to the surface by elevated sources are artesian wells . This is possible even if the outlet is in the form of a 300 foot deep cave. In this case the cave is used like a hose by the higher elevated recharge area of groundwater to exit through the lower elevation opening. Non-artesian springs may simply flow from a higher elevation through the earth to a lower elevation and exit in the form of a spring, using the ground like a drainage pipe. Still other springs are the result of pressure from an underground source in the earth, in the form of volcanic activity. The result can be water at elevated temperature as a Hot Spring. The action of the groundwater continually dissolves permeable bedrock such as limestone and dolomite creating vast cave systems.- Types of spring outlets Seepage or filtration spring. The term seep refers to springs with small flow rates in which the source water has filtered into permeable earth. Fracture springs, discharge from faults, joints, or fissures in the earth, in which springs have followed a natural course of voids or weaknesses in the bedrock. Tubular springs are essentially water dissolved and create underground channels, basically cave systems. Spring water content Minerals become dissolved in the water as it moves through the underground rocks. This may give the water flavor and even carbon dioxide bubbles, depending upon the nature of the geology through which it passes. This is why spring water is often bottled and sold as mineral water. Springs that contain significant amounts of minerals are sometimes called 'mineral springs'. DRINKING WATER FROM THIS SPRING IS NOT ADVISED! In order to log a find for this Earthcache, please upload a photo of you and your GPS at the site, and provide the answers to the following two questions by email: 1. From the information provided above, what type of spring is Jew's Harp? 2. From the information sign at the spring, beside being a water source, what was the spring used for by the plantation owners? Please do not include answers in your log. Congratulations on FTF: bobandia
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