New York State Museum 



Roofing Slate Quarries of Washington County 



Most descriptions of this region state that the slate belt is 

 divided by the quarrymen into four parallel ranges as follows: 

 East Whitehall red slates, the Mettowee, or North Bend red 

 slate, the purple, green and variegated slates of Middle Gran- 

 ville, and the Granville red slates. 



While this classification is of assistance in studying the region, 

 it is not descriptive of the present conditions, for the following 

 reasons: the East Whitehall (Hatch hill quarries) have been ex- 

 tended southward till now, the most important of them are in 

 Granville township; the Mettowee, or North Bend quarries are 

 at present idle, one new opening being the only active repre- 

 sentative of this range; the red slate quarries north of Granville, 

 are now idle, and several new ones are operated intermittently 

 south of that village, and several large quarries are not included 

 in this classification. 



At present most of the quarries are located irregularly along a 

 north and south line which extends from the Hampton vari- 

 colored quarries on the north, and includes the North Bend, the 

 Middle Granville, the red quarries north and south of Granville 

 and the Slateville red and green quarries; then, bending slight lv 

 westward, it extends through the purple and green quarries of 

 Salem, Shushan and Cambridge. The East Whitehall (Hatch hill) 

 quarries are west of the northern end of this belt. They are 

 situated 6 miles southeast of Whitehall and 4 miles southwest of 

 Hampton and are partly in Whitehall, partly in Granville town- 

 ships. The continuation of the red slate, south of these quarries, 

 can be traced, by means of outcrops and openings, nearly to the 

 Mettowee river, but no red slate is exposed in the rock walls of 

 that stream. 



The most northerly outcrop of the Hatch hill red slate crosses 

 the Whitehall road about one half mile north of the quarries, 

 where two narrow beds of red slate, surrounded by green, cross 

 the road diagonally. This point is miles north of the most 



