Gulf Beaches Owe Their Sparkle to Quartz
Those Tiny Grains of Sand Start Their Journey in the Mountains to Settle on the Shores
THE END OF THE LAST ICE AGE
It’s no secret many of the beaches on the Gulf of Mexico’s coastline are some of the whitest, softest, and most pristine in the world. What’s not as well known is that the grains of sand making up these beaches are actually tiny white quartz crystals that originated in the Southern Appalachian Mountains of North Georgia.
For thousands of years, quartz-mineral rocks have been abundant in the Appalachian chain. Their journey from mountain rocks to beach sand began about 20,000 years ago at the end of the last Ice Age and continues to a lesser degree today.
At the end of that Ice Age, temperatures began rising, ice caps started melting, and massive volumes of water began rushing down rivers to oceans around the world. Huge quantities of Appalachian quartz rocks got swept up in the onslaught, breaking up and eroding to smaller pieces as they traveled southward. Eventually the quartz pieces were swept into today’s Apalachicola River and then into the Gulf of Mexico.
TIDES POLISH THE GRANULES
Once in the Gulf, the quartz continually churned and tumbled with tides and waves, further eroding and eventually polishing the granules. As sea levels rose, the massive volumes of grains then washed ashore and formed new coastlines. Currents dispersed them westward and southward from the mouth of the Apalachicola, ultimately forming most of the beaches along the panhandle and Alabama Coasts, as well as many from Tampa southward.
COOL TO THE TOUCH
In addition to lending beauty to beaches along these coastal stretches, the quartz also keeps those beaches comfortably cool to the touch. Quartz is a hard crystalline mineral which dissipates heat from the sun.
Many beaches around the world are composed of a mixture of minerals from various rocks, shell fragments, and other substances, varying widely in color. Some are even black. Not so of Florida’s and Alabama’s shimmering almost 100-percent-quartz white beaches.
SAME COMPOSITION AS CRYSTAL WINE GLASSES
Two other little-known facts about these quartz beaches are that the grains of sand are all almost identical in size, and the quartz chemical composition is silicon dioxide, which is identical to that of crystal wine glasses.
So, the next time you are building sandcastles, sunbathing, or walking along the shore in this part of the world, you have one more reason to marvel at the beauty around you.
Published on Wednesday, August 2, 2023