Isle Royale National Park - Soil

Soil

Bedrock on Isle Royale is basalt or sandstone and conglomerates on the 1100 million year old Midcontinent Rift. Most of the island is covered with a thin layer of glacial material. A number of small native copper mines were active in the 1800s but mining was never really prosperous. Recent analyses by the USGS of both unmineralized basalt and copper-mineralized rock show that a small amount of naturally-occurring mercury is associated with mineralization.

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