PKossEE] ULSTER AND DELAWARE R. R. SECTION. 55 
NO. 1487 Al.— WEST HURLEY. 
A sandstone quarry of bluish stone in the village just south of the 
railroad. The dip is 5° or more and about 25° north of west. No fos- 
sils were found in this quarry. 
From Stony Hollow to about 1 mile west of West Hurley the railroad 
crosses the main belt of the " Hudson River bluestone." This region 
is composed of a moderately level plateau of 500 feet or more elevation, 
and very generally near the surface is a stratum of fine-grained bluish- 
gray sandstone, in many places lying near the surface for an area of a 
number of acres. Near the railroad the best quarries have been 
worked so extensively as to exhaust the supply of good stone, especially 
in a number of the earlier quarries. The value of this region was 
described by Mather, 1 at which time the industry had reached consid- 
erable proportions, and an additional impetus was given by the opening 
of the railroads. 
Stratigraphically, the lower portion of these quarries belongs in the 
Hamilton, and the upper part of the belt in the Portage, Avhile the 
quarries still higher are in the Catskill, as stated by Prof. Smock in 
1888." 
No. 1487 Bl. — The Hurley Stone Crushing Company's quarry, 
formerly called Lawson's quarry, is one-half mile west of West Hurley. 
The quarry was formerly worked extensively for flagging stone, which 
has been mainly taken out, the stripping rendering it now unprofita- 
ble to work. Prof. Smock says where the stripping "is over 20 feet 
the quarry beds must be thick and the stone of good quality to pay 
for its removal. A rule is that the total thickness of quarry beds must 
uot be less than one-third of the stripping." 3 
A New York company has been formed, called the " Hurley Stone 
Crushing Company," which has put in a crusher, and proposes to crush 
the w r aste stone on the dumps for road material. In this region there 
is an immense amount of this waste rock on the old dumps which is 
available for such purposes. The rock of the Lawson quarry is mainly 
the blue rather thin-bedded sandstone, part of which has a tendency 
to weather to a reddish tint, and is separated by partings of shale. 
In places a good many clay concretions are present, and glacial strire 
show on the top of the sandstone layer at the surface, running nearly 
northeast and southwest. On the south side of the eastern part of the 
quarry there is a dip of about 6°, 40° north of west. By the barometer 
'Geol. N. Y., Pt. 1, 1843, pp. 318, 319. 
**Bull. N. Y. State Mus. Nat. Hist., vol. I, No. 3, March 1888, pp. 17-19. The distribution of this 
belt, location of the quarries, and character of the rock are also fully described (ibid., pp. 71-78). 
Much of this data is repeated, with somo additional information, by Prof. Smock in a later bulletin 
(ibid., vol. ir, No. 10, 1890, pp. 222-225, 265-271), while a considerable part of the information was 
first published in the " Keport on the Building Stones of the United States," Tenth Census of the 
U. S., vol. x, pp. 130-134. 
»Bull. N. Y. State Mus. Nat. nist., No. 3, p. 74. 
