POPULAR GEOLOGY

Stop 21: Cabana Club

31 East 400 South

This building’s notable building stones, the quartzite flagstones, have been removed and are no longer visitable.

The Cabana Club opened its doors on May 5, 1940, and is the second-oldest private club still in Utah (after the Alta Club). The decorative flagstones on its facade are Elba Quartzite and quartzite of Clarks Basin, both found near the border of Idaho in the northern Grouse Creek Mountains and the Raft River Range in Box Elder County, Utah.

The Elba Quartzite is a green, tan, or whitish stone with a dull finish whereas the quartzite of Clarks Basin is tan, brown, and cream-colored, usually with a shiny surface. These quartzites are a flat, hard, and durable material which makes them desirable for interior and exterior veneer and paving material.

Quarried periodically since the 1950s, these thin-bedded rocks break into 1/2 to 2-inch thick plates that are pried out with hand tools and then sorted by color, shape, and size and stacked on pallets ready for shipping.

The original sandstone deposit that eventually became the Elba Quartzite accumulated during the late Precambrian (2.5 billion to 570 million years ago). The quartzite of Clarks Basin was initially beach sands of a sea that spread eastward across Utah during Early Cambrian and early Middle Cambrian time (570 to 523 million years ago).

Local metamorphism in the Raft River-Grouse Creek area during the middle to late Mesozoic (205 to 66 million years ago) altered the original sandstones. Color variation is due to different amounts of iron staining and the amount and type of minerals present during metamorphism.