Today, the 7th and 8th grade visited Providence Canyon in Lumpkin, Georgia. The canyon was formed by water erosion. There are several folk tales about the canyon's formation as well. One tale says that a woman dumps her dish water out her back door and it washed down and formed the canyon. The entire property is protected so it is illegal to deface it.
As we walked down the mountain toward the bottom of the canyon, we saw several protected formations and trees. As we walked across the bottom of the canyon, we crossed several sand bars and saw different types of rocks. Micca is a shiny rock found often at the bottom of the canyon, also you see something that looks like oil. The oil is formed by plants that have decomposed.
When we reached the bottom of the canyon, we saw writing on the walls. It wasn't ancient carvings; it was "modern day hieroglyphics." There were four different layers, the top being clayton down to the bottom which was ripley. There were no rocks, just sand clumps formed by sand moving down stream. There were over 40 different sand colors, depending on the mineral make up in the sand.
Each year the canyon erodes three to five feet so the fence has to be moved back each year.
