page_title: Soldiers Delight Natural Environment Area
section_title: Geology
hierarchical_section_title: Soldiers Delight Natural Environment Area / Geology
caption_attribution_description: English: Boulder of Serpentinite — at Soldiers Delight Natural Environmental Area, the "Serpentine Grasslands". The botanical preserve is located in western Baltimore County, Maryland, U.S. Quarter at top for scale. Sept. 2010.
context_page_description: Soldiers Delight Natural Environmental Area is a nature reserve near Owings Mills in western Baltimore County, Maryland, USA. The site is designated both as a Maryland Wildland and as a Natural Environment Area and is part of the Maryland Wildlands Preservation System. The site's protected status is due to the presence of serpentine soil and over 39 rare, threatened, or endangered plant species along with rare insects, rocks and minerals.
context_section_description: The area is mostly underlaid by serpentinite, a rock that contains very little quartz and aluminium-bearing minerals and consists mainly of serpentine. Weathered serpentinite is dissolved rock, transformed into thin, sand- and clay-poor soil which is easily eroded. This creates a land surface which is stony, unfertile and sparsely vegetated and is the reason that the term "serpentine barren" is used to describe these areas. A typical serpentine barren contains bear oak, Virginia pine, Eastern redcedar, grasses and some unique and rare wildflowers.
  Serpentine is valued as a decorative building stone, road material, and for this area in Maryland, a historic source of chromium ore. Isaac Tyson, a 19th-century businessman from Baltimore, was one of the first to make the connection between the occurrence of chromite and serpentine barrens. He began mining chromite here in 1827. During the 19th century, Soldiers Delight and the Bare Hills district of Baltimore County were the largest producers of chrome in the world. In Maryland, chromite, a significant accessory mineral in the serpentine, was mined until 1860. Several old mines and quarries are still visible in these serpentine barrens.
caption: Boulder of serpentinite at Soldiers Delight Natural Environmental Area
exif: {"Image Make": "Canon", "Image Model": "Canon PowerShot SD1100 IS", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "180", "Image YResolution": "180", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image DateTime": "2010:09:04 16:16:01", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Centered", "Image ExifOffset": "196", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "180", "Thumbnail YResolution": "180", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "5108", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "6930", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/125", "EXIF FNumber": "8", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "80", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0220", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2010:09:04 16:16:01", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2010:09:04 16:16:01", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF CompressedBitsPerPixel": "3", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "223/32", "EXIF ApertureValue": "6", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "95/32", "EXIF MeteringMode": "CenterWeightedAverage", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, compulsory flash mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "31/5", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "2048", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "1536", "Interoperability InteroperabilityIndex": "R98", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "Interoperability RelatedImageWidth": "2048", "Interoperability RelatedImageLength": "1536", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "3202", "EXIF FocalPlaneXResolution": "81920/9", "EXIF FocalPlaneYResolution": "1536000/169", "EXIF FocalPlaneResolutionUnit": "2", "EXIF SensingMethod": "One-chip color area", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF DigitalZoomRatio": "1", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard"}