THE GEOLOGY OF THE SYRACUSE QUADRANGLE II 



from the top is not known, probably 50 to 100 feet. A rough deter- 

 mination from the outcrop of the shales and the dip of the strata 

 would indicate a thickness of nearly 700 feet, but the dip of the 

 shales may differ from that of the rocks in the plateau to the south ; 

 nor is there at present, without some well records, anything to show 

 the uniformity or lack of it in the strata under the heavy overburden 

 of rock. 



The Vernon shale is a soft, argillaceous, hematite-red shale, but 

 in a number of places the red is mottled with green. In places the 

 green occurs in small masses the size of one's hand; elsewhere it 

 forms huge masses of the deposit and sometimes there is an inter- 

 mingling of the two colors. 



The bright red color is due to diffused anhydrous ferric oxid. 

 In the outcrop on the bluff on the north side of Onondaga lake 

 some of the hematite occurs in brilliant crystals, but the greater part 

 of it is intimately diffused through the mass of the shale. The 

 green color in the shale is due to iron in the ferrous or lower oxid 

 state. Part, if not all, of the color comes from the glauconite. The 

 presence of some organic matter in the green spots has prevented 

 the oxidation of the iron to the ferric state or has reduced any 

 ferric iron that may have been present. 1 



Probably the largest outcrop of the Vernon shales on the Syra- 

 cuse quadrangle is in the bluffs on the north side of Onondaga lake 

 along the Oswego canal. Near the bottom of this outcrop there 

 are several layers of rather coarse sandstone, the only sand that 

 has been observed in the shale in this area. About 40 feet of the 

 shale are exposed on the bank of the canal, and at the schoolhouse 

 an eighth of a mile north of the canal is another exposure of about 

 20 feet, more than 100 feet above the bottom of the lower opening. 



The shale is to be seen in a number of places north of the Erie 

 canal, the best exposures being those at the north end of Wolf street, 

 on the Syracuse-Oak Orchard road south of Cicero swamp, and at 

 the New York Central railway yards at Dewitt. It underlies and 

 forms the base of the hill in the north part of the city of Syracuse, 

 and surrounds and probably underlies part or all of Onondaga lake. 

 It may underlie the depression in which the Erie canal passes 

 through the city, but there are no excavations or drill records by 

 which to locate its boundaries here. There is one outcrop on the 

 south side of the Erie canal, at Belle Isle on the west margin of 

 the quadrangle, where the shale has been quarried and used for the 



1 W. J. Miller. N. Y. State Museum Bui. 140, p. 153. 



