State Your Case

September 6, 2004

Girl Scout Troop 357 in Lakewood, Colo., also showed good taste during the past two years, lobbying for stone that isn’t just any rock in the Rockies. The Denver Post reported this summer that the new Colorado state rock is Yule marble, a dimensional material used in famous monuments (the Tomb of the Unknowns), famous waiting rooms (Denver International Airport) and anywhere else you’d like to try it.
Colorado’s list of official state symbols includes the state bird, the lark bunting, and the state song, Where The Columbines Grow. As a Colorado native who lived there for the better part of four decades, I came across both only once (and, believe me, the bird beats the song by a long shot). During all that time, I never felt the need for a state rock.
That sentiment, however, isn’t shared by at half of these United States. Colorado’s action this year makes it the 25th state to adopt a state rock. If little girls keep busy, it won’t be the last.
Forty years ago, when the country went all the way with L.B.J. and the Ford Mustang was the biggest thing to hit town since penicillin (and when people still used that hoary cliché), nobody had a state rock, or at least an official one. Rocks were rocks. Occasionally, one might be tossed at a famous person, but that didn’t make it official; anyway, if you had any class, you threw a brick.
California appears to once again be the nation’s trendsetter, designating serpentine as its state rock in 1965. Why the California State Assembly would choose to do this is unclear, since rocks rarely make campaign donations. Hopefully, if little girls were involved here, they grew up to be wise women and stayed away from Sacramento.
Michigan followed close on California’s heels in 1965, designating the Petoskey Stone as the official state stone. It also became the first to confuse the whole issue of state stones, since the Petoskey Stone isn’t really a particular rock, but a type of fossil.
(“Petoskey, eh? Well, he gets my vote on final reading.” “Sir, Petoskey isn’t a person up for an appointment, it’s a fossil.” “I don’t CARE how old he is! I’m sure he brought in two counties for me last year, and I don’t forget my friends.”)
Ever since Gov. George Romney signed Petoskey into Michigan law on June 28, 1965, state rocks, minerals, geodes and fossils became mixed in a weird agglomerate of official stonedom. Take petrified wood, for example.
In 1967, North Dakota designated Teredo Petrified wood as the official state fossil. Two years later, Texas lawmakers tagged petrified palmwood as the official state stone, and Mississippi followed suit with petrified wood in 1976. Washington state, meanwhile, picked petrified wood as the official state gem in 1975.
Other states pick geodes and minerals as official state stones, including some real eye-openers as Arkansas’ bauxite in 1969, or Florida’s agatized coral in 1979.
And then there’s Massachusetts. Obviously confronted with different hordes of little girls in 1983, state legislators went rock-happy and passed out four different designations. Roxbury Puddingstone is the state stone, but granite is the state building rock and monument stone. Plymouth Rock is the state historical rock, while Dighton Rock is the official state explorer rock.
No such frivolity exists in the Beehive State. I can’t see a group of little girls lobbying the state legislature in Salt Lake City for what became the official rock; in 1991, Utah chose coal.
With all the esoteric choices for state rock – from Missouri’s mozarkite to Oregon’s thunderegg geode – it’s cheery to see some selections that actually can grace a countertop. Along with Colorado’s Yule variety, marble is also the state stone of Alabama and Vermont.
Those clever folks in Montpelier, however, took the lead from legislators across the border in Massachusetts. In 1991, Vermont also chose granite and slate as official state stones.
Granite is the rock of choice for several states, including New Hampshire and North Carolina. South Carolina gives it a local twist with its blue granite, while Wisconsin favors red granite.
It’s likely no surprise to any rockhead that Indiana’s state stone is limestone. It’s also one of the state stones of Tennessee (along with agate), but legislators there in 1979 managed to straddle the fence by making sure limestone’s definition includes its “metamorphic version,” Tennessee marble.
Fans of natural stone can also rejoice when traveling through Nevada. It declared sandstone as the official rock in 1987.
If there’s one state that’s curious by its absence in the state-rock sweepstakes, it’s Georgia. With plentiful resources of granite and marble – not to mention an entire state park consisting of rock (Stone Mountain) – there’s no official designation.
It’s time for the mining moguls in Elberton and other areas to get organized. It’s a prime opportunity to give a legislator something nice to do, and should be good for some good publicity for stone.
On second thought, don’t go charging down to Atlanta just yet. Maybe it’s time to exchange some powerful lobbying services for a boxcar purchase of Girl Scout cookies.