Search results
The term was adopted by early settlers of southern New Hampshire and later by American geologists as an alternative term for an inselberg or isolated mountain. Mount Monadnock is often called Grand Monadnock, to differentiate it from other Vermont and New Hampshire peaks with "Monadnock" in their names.
Mount Monadnock, solitary mass of rock (3,165 feet [965 metres]) in Monadnock State Park, southeast of Keene, southwestern New Hampshire, U.S. It is a classic example of, and gave its name to, the geologic feature called a monadnock. Mount Monadnock was celebrated by Ralph Waldo Emerson in the long.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Native Americans called the mountain Monadnock, its name meaning “mountain that stands alone”. Thoreau made four trips to Monadnock during his lifetime. His first was in July 1844 and marked the starting point of his solo journey through the Berkshires before ending with his hike up Mount Greylock in Adams, Massachusetts.
- Setting The Scene
- Continental Collision
- Mineral Evidence
- Folding
- Erosion
- Glaciers & Today
To begin with, let’s go way back in time. About 415 million years ago, the present-day East Coast of the United States was nonexistent. In fact, the North American continent, at this point named Laurentia, ended just East of Vermont; most of New Hampshire was under an ocean. Across the ocean was a small continent named Avalonia. As Avalonia’s land ...
After approximately 25 million years, Avalonia started to more closely approach the coast of Laurentia. This happened thanks to what is known as a subduction zone. Think of the earth’s surface as a jigsaw puzzle of large pieces of crust called tectonic plates. These tectonic plates do move around, and if two plates jam into each other, the denser o...
Two minerals present in Monadnock’s rocks are sillimanite and garnet. Both of these minerals form under specific heat and pressure conditions, and their presence tells scientists that Monadnock’s rocks were at one point during the Laurentia-Avalonia collision buried at least 12 kilometers (about 7.5 miles) below the surface of the Earth. Today, sil...
Not only were Monadnock’s former seafloor sediments buried deep below the surface of the earth and compressed into rock; the layers were also deformed during the Laurentia-Avalonia continental collision. Think about laying a ream of paper on a table and pushing the edges horizontally towards each other; the paper will soon buckle under the pressure...
Over a long time (and a long time geologically is an extremely long time in everyday terms), many things changed. All of the land in the world, including Avalonia and Laurentia, joined together to create a supercontinent named Pangea, and the large mountains overlying Monadnock’s rocks started to break down and erode away. As this erosion continued...
The most recent major geologic influence to shape Mount Monadnock happened only a few thousand years ago. During the Ice Age, large sheets of ice moved down from the North, slowly working their way up and over the mountain. As they progressed, they smoothed out a sort of ramp on the Northern slope of Monadnock. Looking at many of Monadnock’s bare b...
Aug 30, 2023 · In 1914, the Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests conserved its first tract of 406 acres on Mount Monadnock, beginning a long-term effort to protect the natural integrity of the mountain and its surroundings.
The schist and quartz rock that Mount Monadnock is formed of dates back around 400 million years. Three other local peaks share the mountain’s name. Pack Monadnock (700m/ 2,290 ft) and North Pack Monadnock (694m/ 2,276 ft) are 18 km (11 miles) east in the Wapack Range.
Nov 18, 2014 · The name comes from an Abenaki word meaning “that which stands alone” and is used in more general terms to describe any isolated American mountain, miles away from any neighbors, that formed...
