BURIED VALLEY OF SUSQUEHANNA RIVER IN 
LUZERNE COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA 
N. H. DARTON 
Bureau of Mines, Washington, District of Columbia 
The broad river flats of the Wyoming Valley near Pittston, 
Wilkes-Barré, and Nanticoke, Pa., are underlain by a deposit of 
gravel, sand, and clay which is more than 300 feet thick in places. 
This material occupies a channel which was excavated in the coal 
measures during early Quaternary time and it is a product of river 
deposition. Attention was first attracted to this feature many 
years ago when some of the coal workings reached sand which 
flowed into the mines in large volume and caused great loss of life. 
This buried valley was described by I. C. White in 1883 in his 
geological report on the region’ and in 1885 F. A. Hill’ published 
additional information regarding it. In the 1885 report’ also C. A. 
Ashburner gave a description of the buried valley of Newport Creek. 
In root William Griffith’ published a map and view of a model 
showing the configuration of the floor of these buried valleys based 
on a compilation of all the borings and other data then available. 
This map shows the salient features of the valley in an admirable 
manner, but as numerous areas were not explored by drilling, many 
portions of it had to be shown hypothetically. Since that time 
nearly a thousand additional test holes have been sunk by the coal 
companies, which afford much new light on the configuration of this 
remarkable trough. Recently in making an examination of the 
region to ascertain the amount of sand available for filling coal 
workings I have had occasion to construct a new map, and through 
the kindness of the coal operators I have been able to utilize all the 
new data. The result is given in the map (Fig 1), which shows the 
Second Geol. Survey of Pennsylvania, Report, Vol. G 7, p. 26. 
2 Second Geol. Survey of Pennsylvania, Report for 1885, pp. 637-46. 
3 Pp. 627-36. 
4Wyoming Hist. and Geol. Soc., Proc., V1, 27-36, Plate 1. 
557 
