Education: Field Trips

Sterling Hill Mining Museum is situated in the Highlands region of New Jersey, an area of greatly varied geology and ecology that offers a wealth of opportunities for field investigations in science, history, and industrial technology. 

Currently we offer four field trips to show teachers how scientists operate in the field and to highlight some key localities in the State of New Jersey.  More trips will be developed in the future (suggestions welcome).  Prospective attendees should contact Teresa Crerand, SHMM Education Coordinator, at tcrerand@ptd.net to register.  A minimum of five attendees will be required for any trip to take place.  For more information on any given trip, or to request a customized trip, contact Dr. Earl R. Verbeek, SHMM Education Director, at shmm@ptd.net, or by phone at 973-209-7212.

F1.  Be a Geologist (6 hours, $50)
Participants in this field trip will visit a series of rock exposures in Sussex County to see for themselves how geologists "read the rocks" to interpret geologic history.  Learn what to look for to determine what the environment was like at various times in the geologic past, and test your own powers of observation as we turn you loose with a puzzle or two.  During this trip you will examine shoreline deposits, caves, faults, igneous dikes, mineralized veins, and glacial deposits, all within easy driving distance of Sterling Hill.

F2.  Geology of Franklin and Sterling Hill (6 hours, $50)
The adjoining zinc mines at Franklin and Sterling Hill rank on any basis as world-class ore deposits and have no equal anywhere else on Earth.  The origin of these deposits is still in debate, but fortunately both deposits are still accessible to study in surface exposures and, at Sterling Hill, underground as well.  During this field trip participants will be guided through 1.2 billion years of Earth history, from initial deposition of metalliferous sediments on an ancient sea floor to post-glacial weathering of the ores to form new minerals at and near the surface.

F3.  New Jersey's Iron Mines (6 hours, $50)
New Jersey for decades led the nation in iron-ore production and had more than 400 iron mines, mostly in the northern part of the state.  Join us as we explore several different types of iron deposits in the Highlands region of Sussex County, where numerous iron mines can still be visited if you know where to look.  Along the way you'll learn some history and become acquainted with how iron deposits were first found, how different ores were mined and processed, and how Thomas Edison lost two million dollars in a brilliant but ultimately unsuccessful venture to mine New Jersey iron ore on an unprecedented scale.

F4.  From Ore to Store:  How is it done?  (4 hours, $40)
Many of us have some inkling of how various items are made from materials such as metals, plastics, and glass, but where do those materials come from?  Most of them, of course, are derived from rocks taken from various kinds of mines.  Using zinc as an example, participants in this on-site field trip will be taken to an underground exposure of zinc ore to examine the parent material, and will then tour the mine to trace the process by which the ore was blasted, crushed, loaded, and transported to the surface.  Then we're off to other parts of Sterling Hill to see how the ore was crushed further, dried, sorted and concentrated, transported to loading bins, and ultimately transported to off-site smelters to extract the zinc.  This is an industrial technology tour with strong overtones of applied physics and chemistry.