GEOLOGIC WALKING TOUR OF DOWNTOWN WINONA, MN

Winona is an historic town located on the Mississippi River in the Driftless Region of southeastern Minnesota. Many of its older downtown buildings are on the National Register of Historic Places and were constructed using local quarried rocks and other interesting stone imported from around the globe. We are utilizing these building stones to create a Geologic Walking Tour of Downtown Winona highlighting geology for the citizens and visitors of the Winona area. From our local Oneota Dolostone in the bluffs surrounding our city to Carrera marble statues imported from Italy and 36-foot tall columns of Black Mountain Granite quarried in Dummerston, Vermont, we will make downtown Winona into an accessible geological field trip. We have worked with the Winona County Historical Society to research our historic downtown buildings, from the geology of where the rocks were quarried to their formation and other geologically interesting features that can be included in the walking tour.

To increase the accessibility of this Geologic Walking Tour, we are creating a Spanish language version of the tour. The population of Spanish speakers in Winona County has risen in recent years, with our population of Hispanic or Latino residents doubling from 1.6% in 2009 to 3.1% in 2019 making it the largest minority group in the county. This field trip will also be utilized in our introductory geology courses at Winona State University. After exploring mineral and rock samples in lab, undergraduate students will follow the Geologic Walking Tour, make observations about the various building stones, and then place these rocks into their geologic context within the rock cycle as well as use them to explore the geologic time scale. Students will consider the economic rationale behind which rock types are used for certain buildings; for example, the trade-offs between a rock’s resistance to erosion, strength as a building material, ease of access in terms of distance to the quarry, and overall cost of the material. Our Geologic Walking Tour of Downtown Winona will combine history and geology to highlight our community’s dependence on the geosciences and provide another way for our citizens and visitors to experience the geology of Winona in our everyday life.