- Steilacoom — Thumbnail History (historylink.org)
Steilacoom was one of the earliest non-Native settlements in the future state of Washington. Established just six years after Oregon Trail emigrants first arrived on Puget Sound, it quickly became a hub of social and economic activity. It was the first town incorporated by the territorial legislature and the first seat of government for Pierce County, but after the railroad bypassed Steilacoom in 1873, its early prominence faded. Steilacoom survived mainly as a vacation destination for visitors from larger cities and later as a bedroom community for nearby urban areas. In recent decades residents have embraced the town’s history through preservation projects and community events highlighting its importance in Washington’s history.
- Renton Formation—Nonmarine fine- to medium-grained arkosic sandstone and siltstone containing abundant subbituminous coal beds and carbonaceous shale.
- Tukwila Formation—Andesitic to dacitic volcanic sandstone, siltstone, shale, tuff-breccia, tuff, volcanic mudflow (lahar), carbonaceous shales, and minor lava flows or sills. Typically massive; only local sedimentary interbeds indicate structure. K-Ar age on plagioclase from tuff-breccia at top of unit, about 3 km west of quadrangle, yielded an age of 42.0±2.4 Ma (Turner and others, 1983)
- The Chuckanut Mountains were formed by the folding of the Chuckanut Formation (which is predominantly made up of layers of 55-million-year-old sandstone, conglomerate, shale, and bituminous and sub-bituminous coal) and the later Huntingdon Formation (predominantly shale and sandstone) on top, as well as an exposed section of pre-Jurassic-age phyllite
- Shale (Wikipedia)
Shale is a fine-grained, clastic sedimentary rock formed from mud that is a mix of flakes of clay minerals (hydrous aluminium phyllosilicates, e.g. kaolin, Al2Si2O5(OH)4) and tiny fragments (silt-sized particles) of other minerals, especially quartz and calcite. Shale is characterized by its tendency to split into thin layers (laminae) less than one centimeter in thickness. This property is called fissility. Shale is the most common sedimentary rock.
