The Scheibenberg near Annaberg
Near the city of Annaberg in the southwestern Ore Mountains in southeastern Germany there is the Scheibenberg with a large outcrop in an abandoned quarry, which cuts in half the summit area of the Scheibenberg and provides an excellent insight into the interior of the mountain. The famous organ pipes of the Scheibenberg are basalt columns of a basalt flow from the Oligocene. Since the 16th century, the hard basalts in the vicinity of the towns of Schlettau and Scheibenberg have been mined for building purposes, worked up as road paving or crushed into gravel. In the 19th century, clays found under the basalts were also mined. Until 1936, basalt columns were broken on the Scheibenberg, before it was put under protection in 1937. The aim was not to further destroy the basalt columns, but rather to preserve them for posterity as an object worthy of special protection. In 2006 the Scheibenberg was raised to the “National Geotope”, an award that was given to a total of 77 geotopes throughout Germany by the Academy of Geosciences in Hannover. In 2019, the geotope was also put under the protection of the UNESCO World Heritage montane region/Krušnohoří. … Continue readingThe Scheibenberg near Annaberg