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un into what is in my opinion at least the most spectacular formation in the gorge this is cavern cascade it s a massive waterfall although not the largest in the park still that spills out into a deep pool your blogger by cavern cascade cavern cascade is also the other waterfall that the trail passes behind there s a much great volume of water passing in this waterfall and the roaring sound of the water as it reverberates around the cavernous opening is spectacular to behold if you stand behind the cavern cascade waterfall you get a real sense of the erosional power of water and you get to see the impacts this power has had as you stare out over this section of the gorge all the changes in topography you see in the photo above is due to water and what it does over time just downstream from cavern cascade which you can see peeking around in the top portion of the photo is another but unnamed waterfall at this point in time the gorge is almost over glen creek runs through one more narrow slot canyon like section of the gorge once again highlighting the erosional power of water this section of the gorge also distinctly highlights the layering found in the genesee group with one more waterfall glen creek spills out into a wide section of the gorge directly looking into seneca valley just to the left in this main valley out of sight in this photo is seneca lake the largest and deepest of the finger lakes this part of watkins glen state park is the main entrance and it is indeed the main way people enter the park the town of watkins glen is located right outside the gorge opening the main entrance also contains a gift shop and welcome center for the park looking back toward the gorge you would never know what lies in wait from this angle if you ever find yourself in the finger lakes region do yourself a favor and visit watkins glen state park if you do i have a few tips there is no entrance fee but there is a parking fee however there is free street parking if you don t mind walking a couple hundred yards extra also get there early i arrived at 6 am sharp and it was literally only me and one other early rising photographer for the first two hours or so for a park that attracts over 700 000 people a year having to share the park with only one other person is fantastic this park does get busy as the day goes on but an early visit means you get the park almost to yourself also if you re a photographer you need a tripod to take decent photos of the gorge there is plenty of room for a tripod on the wide rock walls of the trail so you don t need to worry about taking up room on the trail as a friend of mine who used to work at watkins glen state park would say come visit it s gorge ous posted by kyle brooks at 4 28 pm 3 comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels nature ohio photography parks geology new york photography waterfalls location watkins glen state park 1009 n franklin st watkins glen ny 14891 usa the geology of watkins glen state park years ago i saw a photo of a spectacular place called watkins glen state park and i decided that i would at some point in my life go visit the park that chance came this past june as i was traveling from maine to ohio to start a new job i made a detour into the finger lakes region of new york and spent a morning exploring the park that lies just on the edge of the town of watkins glen watkins glen state park one of the 215 parks and historic sites operated by the state of new york sits at the very southern edge of lake seneca the largest and deepest of the finger lakes the main attraction of the state park is a deep shale gorge with over a dozen waterfalls the geological history of this gorge is incredibly interesting and this post will dive into that history we ll explore the geological context of the rock layers that the gorge cuts through while also examining what forces eroded those rocks to form the gorge itself after this post i ll be posting a pictorial walk through of the gorge so stay tuned for that post as well for more photos and information about the modern day park update here is the second post a journey through the watkins glen gorge when trying to understand and appreciate any present day geological formation you have begin with understanding the rocks that the formation is made of the history of the rocks gives you context for how erosional forces ultimately created the formation in question and understanding the gorge at watkins glen state park is no different in a quick and dirty summary fine grained sediments were deposited in a shallow sea and these sediments formed a thick layer of a soft rock called shale large scale tectonic forces then exerted pressure on this shale layer creating thousands of fractures called joints these joints represent weak areas in the shale and when glacial and post glacial forces met these joints water was able to easily erode the shale and cut a deep gorge over the time span of several thousand years map courtesy of woudloper from wikimedia commons let s look at this geological story in greater detail though our story begins approximately 380 million years ago in the late devonian period as you might expect the earth looked quite different at this time terrestrial plants were just beginning to take root across the world and early amphibious tetrapods like tiktaalik were first venturing onto land for short spurts of time but also occurring at this time and of importance to this story was the acadian orogeny orogeny meaning a period of mountain building the two smaller landmasses of avalonia and baltica had been colliding with the continent of laurentia which is the ancient landmass that the modern north american plate is built around the collision of these landmasses pushed up layers of rock forming an ancient mountain range called the acadian mountains map courtesy of dennis c murphy via the devonian times these acadian mountains were flanked on the southeast by the ancient rheic ocean and on the northwest side by a shallow inland sea called the kaskaskia sea the kaskaskia sea covered what is now western new york western pennsylvania ohio michigan west virginia and more it is in the kaskasia sea that our story continues as all mountain ranges experience the acadian mountains faced erosional forces like rain and wind and eroded sediments began moving downhill on the northwestern side of the acadian mountains many streams and rivers were transporting these sediments down the mountains and toward the kaskaskia sea once these waterways hit the kaskaskia sea they formed a large series of deltas geologists refer to these deltas collectively as the catskill delta and the rocks that were subsequently formed from these delta sediments underlay many parts of what was to become western new york western pennsylvania and parts of ohio and west virginia if you pay close attention while hiking in the gorge you can actually see remnants of ripples that formed from the catskill delta sediments after they were deposited on the floor of the kaskaskia sea although these fossilized ripple marks are common in the overall rock layers they can be hard to notice luckily a section of the gorge trail exposes some of these ancient hardened seafloor ripples the photo above shows these ripple marks and they can tell us a bit about the environment in which they were formed due to the fact that the ripples are lobe shaped we can tell that the water at this specific point in time and at this specific area had a good deal of energy in it as the higher energy current created linguoid ripples many of the sediments that were deposited in the catskill delta especially the area that would become western new york were fine grained i e small these fine grained sediments eventually became fine grained rocks like shale and siltstone although there are some thinner layers of limestone and sandstone mixed in as well the rock layers of the catskill delta are incredibly thick ranging from several hundred feet thick to several thousand feet thick depending on your location this large formation is subdivided into smaller layers and the rocks that are exposed at watkins glen state park belong to a specific slice of the catskill delta formation called the genesee group the genesee group is primarily made up of what are known as black shales as one might guess black shale is called such due to its dark hue this dark coloration is thought to be the result of its depositional environment lacking oxygen also to note as this will come into play later on shales are relatively soft rocks and are consequently easy to erode as the permian period began around 300 million years ago another orogeny took place this orogeny termed as either the appalachian or alleghenian orogeny occurred as gondwana specifically the part of gondwana that would become africa collided with euramerica the continent that was made of laurentia plus the newly acquired avalonia and baltica from the acadian orogeny a giant mountain range was formed that included the appalachian mountains ouachita mountains atlas mountains and several other associated ranges the ocean that used to separate gondwana and euramerica was also closed up during this orogeny the resulting euramerica gondwana landmass is known today as pangea a name many of you have undoubtedly heard when this giant tectonic collision occurred it exerted a tremendous deal of pressure on the rocks of the catskill delta formation including the rocks of the genesee group this pressure cracked these rock layers in thousands upon thousands of areas creating a multitude of small fractures in the rocks known as joints these joints come into play later on as a joint represents a weak area in a rock that can be more easily eroded by water when you hike through the gorge today you can see these joints nearly everywhere you look the dissected allegheny plateau after the permian period the areas that were to become western new york pennsylvania and west virginia as well as eastern ohio and parts of eastern kentucky experienced various cycles of sediment deposition and erosion by the time that the cretaceous period ended and the paleogene period began around 64 million years ago the land in this area had been eroded down to a broad flat plain that was criss crossed by rivers and streams however this all changed during the neogene period around 20 million years ago this part of the world experienced a period of uplift and this flat plain suddenly found itself raised up as a plateau which we call the allegheny plateau the rivers and streams that criss crossed the allegheny plateau began eroding down into the plateau over the next several millions of years the allegheny plateau began to resemble less and less of a broad flat plain and began to look more like a hilly dissected plateau map adapted from google maps if you were to look at western new york at this time you would see it was rather hilly with stream valleys in between the hills some of these stream valleys ran nearly north south these north south running valleys ultimately became the finger lakes that you can see today but how glaciation beginning around 2 5 million years ago the earth began a cyclical period of cooling and a large ice sheet formed at the north pole thus began the pleistocene ice age during this ice age the polar ice sheet advanced and retreated in a cyclical fashion nearly two dozen times each time this ice sheet advanced southward it would travel up those north south running valleys in western new york making them wider and deeper remnants of the hanging valley carved by glen creek as it empties out into the main seneca valley the valley no longer hangs above seneca valley the last glacial advance of the pleistocene ice age reached its max extent around 20 000 to 18 000 years ago this glacial advance was termed the wisconsin glacial period and it s the effects of this glacier which set the stage for the actual formation of the watkins glen gorge when this glacier was at its extent the glacial ice had completely filled the seneca valley the glacier did not however cover the tops of the ridges that flanked either side of this valley at least this is what is currently thought by the majority of geologists from what i ve gathered a small stream now called glen creek formed on the western ridge of seneca valley and the water in the creek emptied out either onto the top of the glacier or into a hole in the glacier we will never know for sure as the glacier began retreating from the valley the small stream valley that the glen creek had began carving found itself perched above the main seneca valley which was now becoming ice free when a smaller valley is perched above a main valley that was carved by a glacial the smaller valley is known as a hanging valley for a visual of what a hanging valley check out this diagram and this is how the watkins glen gorge began when it comes to liquid water it s really important to know that gravity is forcing water to travel to the lowest point of land it can possibly get to this is why water flows downhill this feature of liquid water can create spectacular erosional features especially if a stream finds itself having to cover more vertical distance than it previously had to when a stream finds itself in such a situation it begins to incise which is eroding downward in a narrow fashion stream incision has led to formations like the grand canyon in arizona or the new river gorge in west virginia and in western new york stream incision led to the creation of watkins glen gorge glen creek as it begins cutting into the top portion of the genesee group layers starting approximately 12 000 years ago the water in glen creek had to travel from atop a ridge down to a lake now called seneca lake which had formed at the bottom of the valley this is a vertical distance of roughly 1 000 feet as it traveled downhill it began cutting into the bedrock the creek soon hit the genesee group which if you remember was that layer made of soft shales and filled with joints this is when things got interesting glen creek began incising deeply into the shales of the genesee group the joints made it easier for the water to do so as well as we mentioned earlier joints are an area in a rock layer that can be more easily eroded than a solid piece of rock essentially joints allow for water to access and impact a greater surface area of the bedrock than a solid block of rock would allow liquid water in a joint can mechanically and chemically weather and erode the rock and water in the joint can freeze and further crack and break apart the rock as the water expands consequently many of the awesome formations in watkins glen gorge occur where a joint is or used to be if you look at the photo above you can see several joints running up and down the exposed bedrock you ll also notice that a waterfall formed along one of the joints for the past 12 000 years glen cre...