A Stone Aircraft Hangar and Teaching Building on the Campus of Idaho State University, Pocatello, Idaho

Building Image
 
      One thinks of aircraft hangars of corrugated aluminum, or perhaps wood, but the building above is a stone hangar and teaching building on the campus of Idaho State University in Pocatello, Idaho. The building was constructed as a hangar by the WPA in the late 1930s and still is used for vocational education by the ISU College of Technology.

      If it's odd to have a stone hangar, at least most of the stone is appropriate to the hangar's setting in Pocatello, in southeastern Idaho. The structure is built largely of sandstone derived from the mountains above Pocatello. Liesegang banding can be seen in the brown chunk of sandstone at the right in first image below, and cross-bedding turned vertically can be seen at right in the second image. In addition, Pocatello sits at the edge of the Snake River volcanic province, so it's not too surprising that a few pieces of vesicular basalt can be seen, to the left in both of the images below. Less explicable is the one stray piece of granite at right in the lower image, a reminder of the combined vagaries of geologic transport and human transport of stone.

 
Stone Image
 
Stone Image

 


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