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About half a billion years ago
- About half a billion years ago, the rocks that now make up the Shenandoah Valley solidified from ancient tidal flat sediments into vast, horizontal layers of limestone, shale, sandstone, and dolomite.
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What is the geology of Shenandoah National Park?
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To really understand the geology of Shenandoah National Park, we first have to look at the park’s setting. It is located in the Appalachian Mountains, an ancient mountain range in the eastern United States that started to form roughly 470 million years old, when separate landmasses started to converge.
Oct 26, 2023 · The ancient Grenville rocks, the lava flows, and the sediments represent the three main geologic units found within Shenandoah. All of these events occurred over 400 million years ago and the Appalachian Mountains had yet to appear on the scene!
- Mountain & Valley Building
- Limestone & Karst Terrain
- Other Rocks & Minerals
About half a billion years ago, the rocks that now make up the Shenandoah Valley solidified from ancient tidal flat sediments into vast, horizontal layers of limestone, shale, sandstone, and dolomite.
The Valley’s abundant limestone is evidence that the area was once under ocean water, long before the tectonic plates collided. Limestone forms in warm, shallow seas when generations of tiny sea creatures die and accumulate on the ocean floor, later to compress into solid rock.
Many rocks and minerals occupy the Shenandoah Valley besides limestone. Other sedimentary rocks in the region are sandstone, shale, and coal. There are igneous rocks like granite, gabbro, and basalt, and metamorphic rocks like slate, gneiss, and quartzite. Manganese, iron ores, zinc, lead, sulfur, gypsum, and pyrite are relatively common Shenandoah...
Geology. Shenandoah National Park lies along the Blue Ridge Mountains in north-central Virginia. These mountains form a distinct highland rising to elevations above 4,000 feet (1,200 m). Local topographic relief between the Blue Ridge Mountains and Shenandoah Valley exceeds 3,000 feet (900 m) at some locations.
The geologic story of Shenandoah National Park began 1 billion years ago. Molten magma, miles beneath the earth's surface, slowly solidified to become the "basement rock," or core, of what we know today as the Blue Ridge Mountains.
May 30, 2023 · Geologic Formations. From ancient tectonic collisions to the rolling Appalachians of today, the geological story of Shenandoah is old and unfinished. Basement rocks, left over from a mountain range even older than the Appalachians, form the foundation upon which the Shenandoah Blue Ridge rises.
The Shenandoah River is cut into the Blue Ridge Mountains chain creating a pathway for further geological changes by slowly eating away at the rock that flanks it. It is layered with quartzite, limestone and sandstone that flowed into the river during the separation of the land 600 million years ago.
