226 BULLETIN OF THE NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



Quarries were opened In this sandstone more than a 

 century ago, and many of the old houses of Rockland 

 county are built of this stone. Prof. Mather reported 

 thirty-one quarries on the bank of the Hudson near Nyack.* 

 The principal market was New York city, and the stone 

 was sold for flagging, house trimmings and common walls. 

 The Nyack quarries have been abandoned, with one or two 

 exceptions, as the ground has become valuable for villa sites 

 and town lots. There are small quarries at Suffern, near 

 Congers Station, near New City, and west of Haverstraw, 

 at the foot of the Torne mountain. They are worked 

 irregularly and for local supplies of stone. The stone is 

 sometimes known as '' Nyack stone," also as '' Haverstraw 

 stone." 



Glacial Drift 



This formation, consisting of unsorted clays, sands, grav- 

 els, cobbles and boulders, is found in all parts of the state. 

 The nature of the imbedded stone varies greatly both as to 

 variety and amount. In places the deposits are full of large 

 blocks of stone and of more or less rounded and scratched 

 boulders ; in other localities the hard, quartzose cobbles 



and small boulders predominate. In the sandstone districts 

 of the southern and western parts of the state the surface 

 deposits of glacial drift contain much sandstone, as in 

 the Medina sandstone belt, the Hudson river blue-stone 

 territory and the red sandstones at Haverstraw and Nyack. 

 In the Highlands and In the Adirondacks the rounded, 

 crystalline, granitoid and gneissic rocks predominate. On 

 Long Island the terminal moraine Includes a great amount 

 of stone and of many kinds. 



The cobblestones were formerly used for paving roadways, 

 but this kind of pavement Is no longer laid. From the fact 

 of the stone being picked oJfT the fields in the clearing of 

 land for tillage, the stone of the drift has been known as 



*Wm. W. Mather. Geology of the First Geological District, Albany, N. Y., 1843, 

 p. 287. 



