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REPORT OF THE DIRECTOR I915 I05 



by the occurrence of sand on one side and gravel on the other of a 

 vertical line, and both covered by beds of coarse gravel evidently 

 deposited after the fault had been formed. Features of somewhat 

 similar nature are described by W. B. Dwight^ as present in the 

 clay beds at Clark's Dock Station 3 miles northeast of Newburgh. 

 Haverstraw. The brickyards at the north end of the town were 

 the scene of an earth slide on January 8, 1906, that was accountable 

 for extensive damage and the loss of 20 lives. It is one of the few 

 examples of an artificially produced disturbance of catastrophic 

 proportions on record in the Hudson valley. The cause is ascrib- 

 able to the overdeepening of a cut in terraced clays, the latter 

 belonging to the series of clay beds which front the river in this 

 section but of somewhat different character than those of Lake 

 Albany. The clays had been worked back from the river until the 

 bank, about three-fourths of a mile long, had approached close to 

 one of the village streets. The ciit, apparently, w^as made vertically 

 down into the beds and did not leave any sufficient mass to resist 

 the thrust from the higher ground which had the additional weight 

 of the street and buildings to maintain. Shortly before the slide a 

 crack developed at some distance from the edge of the cut that 

 seems to have been regarded by a few of the dwellers as warning 

 of the impending trouble, for they moved out of the zone of 

 danger. The other inmates of the houses mostly were unable to 

 effect their escape, as the movement began suddenly in the night 

 and, once started, proceeded rapidly until so much earth had slid 

 into the pit that a condition of temporary stability had been 

 attained. Eleven houses altogether toppled over into the pit as the 

 result of the first movement ; they were completely wrecked and in 

 many cases set on fire, while the safety of many others w^as so 

 endangered as to necessitate their abandonment. 



iVassar Bros. Inst. Trans, v. 3, p. 86-95. 1884-85. 



