Sunday, March 24, 2013

A Useful Map - Updated

Updated the Geologic Map to include all the quarries and surface mines as identified on the  'Coal and Surface Structure Map of Fayette County, Pennsylvania' (1938), which was a companion map to the set. Was a bit time consuming, but the color annotations work well with the color Loyalhanna Limestone  crop lines. I checked it twice, and am sure I got them all - they were numbered up to around 325 total. I will update as/if missed ones are found. 

The quarry locations will be of interest to ice climbers. As mentioned, all the best and tallest ice forms at the abandoned Loylahanna Limestone quarries. I located most of them as landmarks on the map. I also included Layton Falls, which is located at an old sandstone quarry. There is supposedly a small mine opening there, which I suspect is an old clay mine. I was never there in warmer weather when the mine wasn't frozen over, so I don't know, and may be wrong about that. We were climbing there one very cold winter day and noticed a plume of "steam" rising from the hillside on the opposite side of the river - obviously some underground opening. We went down the next weekend to investigate  - was before the Yough River Trail, you could drive the whole way down. We hiked up the hillside and discovered a few vertical air shafts - looked just like something out of the old 'Time Machine' movie - looking down in, half expected to encounter some hairy cave creature climbing to the surface. Found a horizontal entrance, and walked inside for a look around. Was an old clay mine and pretty cool. As I recall the mine wasn't very tall - under six feet and we had to stoop most of the time. Was still an old mine buggy railway throughout. Thats why I figure that the falls may have been an old clay mine as well.

Anyway - don't think that I would waste my time checking out anything west of 'Chestnut Ridge', but ya' never know. Many old quarries along 'Laure Hill' according to the map - who knows, may be another 'Confluence Crag' among 'em. If anyone does any "exploring", I'd be interested to hear what ya' find. Won't hold my breath waiting, though.

The revised map:

No comments:

Post a Comment