Rib Mountain State Park
Rib Mountain State Park is a Wisconsin state park near the city of Wausau. The park includes a ski resort, Granite Peak Ski Area, concession stand, picnic areas, a reservable amphitheater, a former quarry, observation tower, and 15.1 miles of trails. The park is ten miles (16 km) north-northwest of Central Wisconsin Airport. History Geologic The park sits along top a long tall and narrow ridge of quartzite that rises from the relatively flat central Wisconsin plain. The quartzite ridge dates back to the Penokean orogeny ~1.8 billion years ago, before this the quartzite was a large sandstone deposit on the edge of a shallow sea. The volcanic activity that resulted from the orogeny metamorphosed the sandstone into the present day quartzite. The resulting quartzite is hard and much more resistant to erosion than the surrounding rock and over the following millennia the softer surrounding rock eroded away revealing the present day ridge. Pre Colonial Central Wisconsin, where the park is located was once populated by the Chippewa, they referred to the ridge as O-pic-wun-a-se-be, sometimes given as "Opigigan" or "Opigeganama." The first part of the word meaning rib. It was used as a lookout point and navigational landmark by