32 NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



The gypsum bed appears at several places around the western 

 flank of the hill where there are abandoned quarries, and in an 

 abandoined tunnel near Fiddler's Green, a station on the Jamesville 

 trolley line. 



The close proximity of the railroad to this area is a feature that 

 should bring about its greater development. The track is now only 

 a mile from the mines, but there is a difficulty in the way of extend- 

 ing the switch because of the steep valley of Butternut creek. 



Other quarries in Onondaga county. The deposits in other sec- 

 tions of the county are mainly of the pockety type and consist of 

 mixtures of white gypsum, selenite flakes and crystals and fibrous 

 gypsum veins with shale. As in Madison county, they rarely run 

 over lo feet in thickness and 25 feet in diameter. They are usually 

 surrounded by shales and layers of impure limestone and occur both 

 immediately under the Bertie waterlime or in the shales farther to 

 the north. 



In the eastern portion of the county the deposits are quite numer- 

 ous in the town of Manlius, the hilly area between ChittenangO', 

 Mycenae and Fayetteville containing many such deposits. Many 

 of the knolls have been opened up from time to time and the gypsum 

 worked foir land plaster, but at present no production is made. 

 Westward there are no beds, with the exception of those in Dewitt 

 township, already discussed, until the Onondaga valley is reached. 

 The heavily glaciated area between Butternut creek and Syracuse 

 probably contains gypsum beds, but as yet they are uncovered. 



Two and a half miles south of Syracuse, A. E. Alvord formerly 

 quarried a gypsum deposit. Vanuxem in his. third annual report 

 [p. 256] mentions the working of gypsum dciposits along the rail- 

 road from Syracuse to Split Rock, and no doubt there are many 

 small deposits in that section. 



In the construction of the railroad from Syracuse to Auburn 

 large quantities of gypsum were unearthed along the south side of 

 Nine Mile creek between Camillus and Martisco (formerly Mar- 

 cellus station). Thousands of tons of the material were taken out 

 and the deposits attracted great attention. The gypsum bed con- 

 sists of a mixture of limestone, shale and selenite or at times a 

 whitish gypsum with wavy markings. At no part of the extensive 

 cut w^as gypsum in pure masses observed, and if quarrying were 

 undertaken the whole impure mass would need to be excavated and 

 the percentage of gypsum would run low. The ease of mining 

 and its accessibility to the railroad may render it of some value in 

 the future. Other outcrops occur farther to the west, at Martisco. 



