BY MARK WINEKA
SALISBURY POST

MILL BRIDGE – It was as exciting as dirt.

There they were, Ruby Sloan and 10 soil scientists and conservationists standing in and around a 6-foot-deep hole in Sloan’s back pasture. John Kelley had a tripod down in the hole and was taking pictures.

Taking picture after picture of dirt. Flash included.

The quirky exercise struck Adrian Moon as a bit comical. The soil conservation technician, who happens to be Sloan’s grandson, said he never saw such a frenzy over the red clay he grew up with.

But this was a delightful, serious exercise for these soil enthusiasts, a bunch all unto their own. Bruce Rider, district soil conservationist for Rowan County, recalled the old saying: Get three soil scientists together and you’ll have four different opinions.

Not this day. The soil experts found harmony on at least one thing.

‘‘We all agree this is red,’’ said Bill Woody, a Salisbury-based resource soil scientist for a 31-county region.

Red, indeed. After some early digging with a backhoe, the men and women were collecting a sample of the Cecil series of soil that is North Carolina’s signature throughout the Piedmont.

A monolith taken from Sloan’s pasture will be North Carolina’s representative soil sample to be on display in Washington for Earth Day 1999. Soil scientists from across the country will be displaying monoliths from each state on the Washington Mall April 22 and 23.

A monolith is a soil profile mounted on a small board, more vertical than wide. The soil scientists dug a fairly deep hole to guarantee a profile of several feet, although the dirt in this section of Rowan County is pretty consistent, top to bottom. Red, top to bottom.

‘‘It’s as good a representative sample as you would find in the Southeast,’’ said Roy Vick, a state soil scientist based in Raleigh. ‘‘It’s your red Piedmont clay.’’

The soil scientists almost speak with reverence of 1999, the 100th anniversary of soil surveys in the United States. In North Carolina, the Norfolk (coastal plains) series and Cecil series are two of the predominant soil types, but the Cecil series was judged to have the most acreage.

A Cecil series sample from Catawba County is one of three soils from North Carolina on display in a world soil science museum in the Netherlands.

‘‘This is better than the world site,’’ Woody proclaimed from the hole.

The Cecil series actually extends from central Virginia to northeast Alabama. Soil scientists in Georgia, in fact, are jealous that North Carolina’s red clay will be on display instead of theirs.

The soon-to-be published Rowan County Soil Survey designates a representative area for different soil types, and this farmland section off Millbridge Road has the best Cecil series soil.

It just so happened that Moon’s grandmother’s land off Fannie Sloan Road was most convenient. She had no problems with their choice, as long as they filled up the hole when they were done.

‘‘Why did I pick this site?’’ Woody said. ‘‘It’s the best.’’

Vick and Rider have high praise for the red clay in this region. It’s one of the best soils for farming and, as such, is fairly responsive to fertilizer. But its characteristics are also good for housing developments. It adapts well to septic tanks and has a strong bearing strength for buildings.

‘‘There’s a lot of demand on this soil,’’ Rider said. ‘‘It gets a lot of use.’’

Debbie Anderson, of the Raleigh office of the Natural Resources Conservation Service, described this red clay as ‘‘a good, clean soil’’ without rocks and fairly deep before bedrock starts.

There are some knocks on the red clay. Erosion has always been a problem. Vick guesses the farmland around Mill Bridge has lost some eight inches of topsoil through the years.

Ultimately, the soil gives out from farming and loses many of its nutrients. The red clay also can be just plain bothersome, given how it stains clothes and shoes so that they never come completely clean.

The soil’s high iron content leads to the bright red color. Chemically, Vick explained, it’s rust.

‘‘Iron oxide,’’ he said.

The monolith extracted from Sloan’s pasture will be dried for two weeks before being coated with floor wax as a fixative. The soil gurus actually took two monoliths with them from Ruby Sloan’s pasture.

The other monolith will go to a world exposition this summer in Chicago. Someone asked Ruby Sloan whether she ever imagined her dirt would be so famous.