12 Report on Building Stone of New York. 



Peekskill to Fishkill, in the Highlands. The Ramapo river valley, 

 ■which is traversed by the New York, Lake Erie and Western rail- 

 road, the Harlem, the New Haven, and the New York City and 

 Northern railroad lines, cross the territory of these crystalline rocks. 

 Mica schist and micaceous gneisses occur on New York island, in 

 Westchester county, and in the eastern parts of Putnam and Dutch- 

 ess counties. They are quarried wherever they are conveniently 

 had, for home use and generally for common wall work and founda- 

 tions. A great amount has been used in New York city in founda- 

 tions and in backs of walls with other stone as face material. In 

 the great Adirondack region and its bordering zone of crystalline 

 rocks, occupying Essex and Hamilton, and large parts of Clinton, 

 Franklin, St. Lawrence, Jefferson, Lewis, Herkimer. Fulton, Sara- 

 toga, Warren and Washington counties, there is a great variety in 

 the outcrops,, but comparatively little work has been done, excepting 

 at a few places on the outskirts of the region, to develop quarries 

 of granite or gneiss. In Saratoga county a quarry in Wilton is 

 worked for paving-blocks. In Essex county quarries have been 

 opened in recent years in Willsborough and near Keeseville. On the 

 north-west there is a quarry near Canton in St. Lawrence county, 

 and the quarries on Grindstone island in the St. Lawrence. At the 

 extreme southern end of the region where it reaches the Mohawk 

 gneiss is quarried to a considerable extent at Little Falls. Other 

 localities are in Greenfield and Hadley, in Saratoga, and at Whitehall 

 in Washington counties. 



The want of transportation facilities in all the great interior, the 

 distance from the great city markets, which call for granites particu- 

 larly, and the more accessible outcrops of limestone and sandstone, 

 which border it, and are nearer the towns and lesser markets, are 

 against the opening of granite quarries in the Adirondack region. 

 Future exploration will no doubt lead to the discovery of beautiful 

 and valuable stone, and the building of railroads will bring them to 

 notice and to market. On the line of the Adirondack railroad and 

 the lines of the Delaware and Hudson Canal Company, and on the 

 shore of Lake Champlain, the work of opening new quarries is in 

 progress and is promising of profitable results. On Grindstone isl- 

 and, near Clayton, Jefferson county, a very large quantity of granite 

 has been quarried for western markets. 



