Black vertical stripe of rock

MCHD’s soil engineers over at Tai and Associates noticed an interesting feature as the excavators were digging out the area for the new Preschool Buildings on the new campus. Note in this picture the white, chalky soil on the left, the orange sandstone on the right, and the vertical black stripe running up the red Carolina clay in between.

This black stripe of rock is known as a Diabase Dike. According to Mr. Matt Ryan of Tai & Assoc, after the formation of the Durham Triassic Basin (250 to 200 million years ago), magma shot through the ground up to the ground surface vertically, forming the diabase dikes.   The magma cooled into fractured rock.

“In this picture, you can actually see portions of the Triassic siltstone that are blackened from the heat of the magma.  Over geologic times, the dikes go through a chemical and mechanical weathering process, and the portion near the surface becomes softer, and weathers into soil.  The soil is sometimes sandy, but is usually a soft, plastic silt with boulders,” says Mr. Ryan.

“The dikes in the Durham Triassic Basin are usually between 5 and 50 feet wide, about 1 to 20 miles long, usually have a heading that is a little east of north-south, and have about a 15 degree inclination fromvertical.”

Pretty cool, huh?

different rock formed by different cooling rates of the magma

Foundation walls of basement of Multipurpose Bldg

Down in the trenches

Leading to Elementary Buidling

Saturday, December 3 MCHD families, founders, teachers, and friends gathered at the site of the new campus on Pickett Rd. to dedicate the foundation. Children and parents were asked to bring something meaningful — a stone, a drawing, some math problems, a hope or dream, a matchbox car, a poem, a photo of the family, etc. These items will be buried in the concrete slab of the Multipurpose and Specials building. After the ceremony, which included singing My Roots Go Down, families wandered the site to see where their future classrooms will be.

The text of the dedication remarks by Head of School, Happy Sayre-McCord:

“Good morning!

Welcome to this very auspicious day for MCHD. Thank you all for coming to celebrate this grand new beginning. We are very fortunate to have two people here who were here at the school’s first beginning: Carrie Benoit Salemi, one of the two first teachers at the school, and Marilyn Bell Hawley, who is one of six people who signed the school’s Incorporation papers on October 12, 1976.

Also here is Charles Nickelson, who is MCHD 2012’s Architect, and the designer and visionary for the future campus we are here to celebrate today.

Today we are laying the foundation for MCHD’s future. We are breaking fresh, new ground, but in fact we will be building on the foundation of everything that has come before us over the past 35 years. I have brought a piece of the foundation of the school’s current home to add this cornerstone, because everything we are doing here is built on all the hard work of so many parents through the years, and our fabulous, wonderful, dedicated teachers, it is built on all the learning that goes on at MCHD, all the generations of children we have watched grow into fine young people, on ALL that has gone before us.

From this foundation will arise again Montessori Children’s House of Durham. Today we dedicate ourselves to build anew, using our hard work, our abiding belief in Montessori education, and our commitment to these beautiful children. Today we dedicate this foundation of Montessori Children’s House of Durham. So let’s give three cheers: Hip hip hooray!”

Our new campus will allow us to offer even more children the incredible Montessori education MCHD is known for, as we expand the number of classrooms for Toddlers, Preschool, and Kindergarten students.

We have created this website so you can follow our progress as we build our amazing new home – MCHD 2012. You can watch our original announcement about the school below, and check out the site plan and drawings under construction right now.

We look forward to realizing this vision for MCHD’s future together with parents, staff, alumni, and the entire MCHD extended family.

Sincerely,

Happy Sayre-McCord

Head of School