Story of the Chautauqua Region 



Mountains. This epoch of crustal movements and folding was the 

 most intense in northern New York; towards the west and Chautauqua 

 the folding did not occur. The evidences extend certainly as far west 

 as Little Falls, and perhaps farther. 



The Shallow Sea 



A shallow sea of great extent covered all of New York State, except 

 the Adirondack and New Jersey Islands, during the remainder of the 

 Silurian and Devonian times. This sea received huge quantities of 

 sediment from the adjacent highland regions. Adirondack, Taconic, 

 and Canadian sections through representative portions of this heavy 

 sediment, which covered the ocean floor, will serve to indicate the long 

 time and vast bulk of the erosive work, Catskill section, ten thousand 

 feet thick; Central New York section, seven thousand feet thick; Chau- 

 tauqua County Highlands section, six to six and a half thousand feet 

 thick. These sections show that during this epoch sediments were de- 

 posited on the floor of the ocean, to a thickness of from one to two 

 miles. 



Under the increasing pressure of these huge deposits, the sea-bottom 

 slowly sank. Beds of shale and limestone accumulated over much of 

 this subsiding floor, with sandstone and conglomerate beds along the 

 shores and beaches. 



The Great Salt Lake 



During this period of prolonged deposition there was a broad general 

 uplift in Ohio and neighboring states. This resulted in making still 

 more shallow the already shallow New York sea, so that it became a 

 great salt lake, without permanent outlet. This condition resulted in 

 the deposition of extensive beds of rock salt, from fifty to one hundred 

 and fifty feet thick, and later covered by strata of very fine mud. Dur- 

 ing this period the Helderberg and Corniferous limestone beds were 

 laid down. 



The Panama Conglomerate ; " Panama Rocks " 



After this period of the Salt Lake, throughout the Devonian, ex- 

 tensive beds of shale were deposited. Upon these shales, in the Panama 

 region of Chautauqua County, the upper Devonian conglomerate was 

 laid down. These conglomerate beds have attracted considerable at- 

 tention because of their fancied resemblance to ruined cities. In such 

 places as Panama, where the beds have broken along the joint planes, 

 and then tumbled apart as a series of huge confused and fantastic blocks, 

 they have been given the name " rock cities." The blocks have been 

 undermined by denudation, which eats away the softer underlying shales 



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