Author: Anna Kusmer / Source: Atlas Obscura
While using the bathroom in one of Washington, D.C.’s congressional office buildings, if you let your eyes wander to the stall dividers, you might notice something that transcends the political moment by a couple million years: fossils engraved on the glossy limestone, ancient shells and exoskeletons left behind by animals of a prehistoric Earth.
When the writer Lily Strelich was a congressional intern, she spent a lot of time admiring the hidden-in-plain-sight fossils that speckle the buildings. This week, she wrote a Self-Guided Tour of the Geology of D.C. Buildings for Eos, a publication of the American Geophysical Union. The tour provides a 2.5-mile walking tour around the National Mall, with 11 stops highlighting a small piece of the geologic story of America’s capital city.
Strelich, who studied geology in college, wanted to spread her love of rocks to people who aren’t used to noticing them. “The idea that there’s a sort of geologic landscape in this urban environment is really wonderful to me,” she says.
One of Strelich’s favorite stops on the tour is the Smithsonian Castle, built from Seneca red sandstone, quarried 20 miles north of the city. Its rusty red color comes from oxidized iron mixed into the rock—it’s literally rusty.
A lot of the geologic materials which make up and adorn the city are brought in from elsewhere, making for a rich mix of local and imported specimens. Strelich says she…
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