THE MINING AND QUARRY INDUSTRY I913 69 



SAND AND GRAVEL 



The production of sand and gravel for use in engineering and 

 building operations, metallurgy, glass manufacture, etc., is an im- 

 portant industry involving a very large number of individual opera- 

 tions. The building stone business is specially extensive as there 

 are deposits suitable for that purpose in every section of the State, 

 and nearly every town or community has its local source of supply. 

 Such sand, of course, possesses little intrinsic value. The deposits 

 of glass sands and molding sands are more restricted in their dis- 

 tribution and their exploitation is the basis of a fairly stable indus- 

 try; certain molding sands are even shipped to distant points, as in 

 the case of those obtained in the Hudson River region. 



The sand and gravel beds of the State are mainly of glacial ori- 

 gin, as the whole territory within the limits of New York, in com- 

 mon with the northern section of the United States east of the 

 Rocky mountains, was invaded by the Pleistocene ice sheet which 

 removed all the loose material accumulated by previous weathering 

 and erosion, and left in its retreat a mantle of transported boulders, 

 gravels, sands and clays. In places these accumulations have the 

 character of unmodified drift or morainal accumulations in which 

 the materials are more or less intermixed, and are then of little 

 industrial value. But more generally the deposits show a sorted 

 stratiform arrangement due to having been worked over by the 

 glacial streams and lakes. Such is the condition in many of the 

 larger valleys like those of the Hudson, Champlain and Genesee 

 where sands, gravels and clays occur separately in terraced beds 

 extending far above the present water level. Later water action 

 may have effected a beneficial re-sorting of the materials as in- 

 stanced by the beach sands of Long Island and some of the lakes 

 in the interior of the State. 



A measure of the importance of the sand and gravel industry 

 may be had from the accompanying table which, however, lacks 

 something in the way of completeness and accuracy. The figures 

 relating to the molding sand production are believed to be a close 

 approximation to the actual amounts, but those for building sand 

 and gravel may vary considerably from the true quantities, perhaps 

 understating them by as much as 25 per cent. The building sand 

 operations are so widely scattered and in many sections carried on 

 in such haphazard or fugitive manner that it is extremely difficult 

 to cover them all in a statistical canvass. 



