Pike. - Area, 630 square miles; population in 1880, 9,963. The Delaware
river after flowing along the north-east border, in a sort of canon,
500` deep, full of sharp bends, 27 miles in a straight line, turns a
right angle at Port Jarvis and flows 28 miles S.W. along the outcrop
of the Marcellus shale at the foot of the Shawangunk mountain of New
Jersey. The road on the north side of the river, excavated in Hamilton
soft sandstone shale, is the best and most picturesque long public drive
in the State. Through the hills of Hamilton, capped with Genessee and
Chemung behind, break the Sawkill (at Milford), the Raameskill (3miles
below Milford), Adam’s creek, (7), Dingman’s creek (8), Decker’s creek
(11), Tom’s creek (18), the Little Bushkill (22), and the Middle Bushkill
(with the Bushkill) at the county line (24 miles below Milford) and
a number of other small streams, through deep, narrow, dark, wooded
gorges, walled with vertical cliffs, and over rapids and cascades, in
the first two instances 100` and 140` high. The upper edge of the Chemung
formation crosses the whole county in a nearly straight line 2 or 3
miles back from the river. The whole county except this narrow belt,
has a rolling hill surface of Catskill red and gray sandstone and slate,
covered with a sheet of Glacial Drift, in the billowy surface of which
lie innumerable little lakes and ponds in process of being turned into
swamps in due course of time. But in the south-west corner of Palmyra
and south-west half of Greene townships the land rises 1950` A.T., the
eastern edge of the great Pocono plateau, down through which the head
branches of the Wallenpaupack cut wild gorges, the walls of which are
300` or 400` high. All the rocks are horizontal strata of conglomerate
or massive sandstone; and the lower country is covered with vast quantities
of their fragments, isolated or in piles, many of great size. North
and South knobs in Blooming Grove township are solitary sentinels of
the plateau left standing 3 miles in front of its eastern edge, their
tops of Cherry ridge conglomerate (with cliffs of 60` to 75`)
rising to 2010` A.T. and commanding magnificent view. The whole Catskill
formation measures 3430` in northern and eastern Pike, as exposed in
the cliffs and slopes of the long canal-like gorges of the Paupack and
the Delaware; Mt. Pleasant red shale 150`; Elk Mountain
sandstones 150`; Honesdale sandstone 100`; Montrose red
shale 225`; Delaware river flags 1430`; New Milford shale
75`; Starucca shales and sandstones 600`. The "blue stone" quarries
between Narrowsburg and Pond Eddy at Stairway, Pond Eddy, and Shohola
(where Vanderbilt’s great pavement flag 15`x 25`x 8`) was got, and at
Millville, Kibler and Rowland’s along the Lackawaxen, are celebrated.
Some red shale beds occur in the upper 430` of the series (one of them
50`) but their absence in the lower 1000` is remarkable. The massive
pebbly Lackawaxen conglomerate (50` to 60`) occurs near the top.
The flag-stone belt is very broad and crosses the county in Monroe and
Carbon counties. Plant remains are rare in the Catskill, but fish bone
fragments occasionally appear in calcareous breccias in the upper half.
The amount of disseminated sesquioxide of iron in the red shale varies
from 7.5 to 8 per cent. No iron ore, coal, or other mineral beds exist
in the county. Even the limestone and cement rocks of Monroe County
run along on the south side of the river in the State of New Jersey.
(For curious details respecting the buried river valley at Port Jarvis
and the possible ancient course of the Delaware eastward into the Hudson;
for drift scratches; and for fossils, see Report G6.)
From: A geological hand atlas of the sixty-seven
counties of Pennsylvania :embodying the results of the field work
of the survey, from 1874 to 1884. By J. P. Lesley. (Report of
progress (Geological Survey of Pennsylvania), v. X ) Harrisburg, PA
: Board of commissioners for the second geological survey, 1885.
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