Symbolizing nothing

I took my students on a tour of the Colorado capitol building today.  Like most state capitol buildings, this one does a nice job honoring unique aspects of its home state.  It's manufactured primarily of materials from throughout Colorado -- it helps that this is a big mining state.

One mineral on display throughout the capitol is rose onyx, which comes from a quarry in Beulah, Colorado.  Rose onyx is a rare mineral, so rare that the entirety of the world's supply of it went into the construction of the Colorado capitol.  So, in honoring the materials of which Colorado is made, the builders actually removed one of those materials from the Earth entirely and placed it in the capitol.  So now the building honors something that no longer exists outside it.  Weird.