Wangum Falls monocline EarthCache
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The underlying rocks here conform to the waterfalls. To log this as a find complete the following.
1. Estimate the diameter of circle the monocline would make if it were fully round.
2. Estimate the channel that was the original rail bed depth the roadway cut is before the bridge.
3. (Optional) Include a picture from the site.
A monocline is a rock formation that is smooth and level or on a slight angle. It also includes all of the layers facing in the same direction. When this smooth surface encounters some type of deforming pressure it will tend to fold. A monocline is the simplest type fold. The Wangum Falls monocline is located on the glaciated Allegheny low plateau about 4 miles northwest of Hawley below the bridge on which Township Rte. 367 crosses Middle Creek. The rocks involved are made of medium- to thick-bedded, gray and red, fine- to medium-grained sandstone that come from the Lackawaxen Member of the Catskill Formation (Upper Devonian). Height of the monocline is 20 feet with the fold facing east-west. The structure bends to the south, the maximum dip of stone being 60 degrees south. The stone bed upstream and downstream of the structure are relatively flat compared to the monocline at the falls. The monocline at Wangum Falls is very unusual, if not unique, in northeastern Pennsylvania. Although its east-west structural orientation appears at first to be somewhat out of place, the top of its layers are within the normal variation of (10 degrees). These layers when bent create joints that are visible. These joints, characteristic of Upper Devonian rocks throughout Pike, Wayne, and Susquehanna Counties, combine with the monocline to create the configuration of Wangum Falls. Although the Wangum Falls monocline may be simply just another Alleghanian compressional structure, its southerly slope, east-west orientation, and near axial-parallelism to a regional joint set hint that it is possibly related to a later tensional stress field, perhaps even Triassic-Jurassic. This feature was taken advantage of by the Pennsylvania Coal Company for transferring coal from the anthracite beds to the west to the New York market. Between 1850 and 1885, loaded coal cars would cross the Middle Creek at this point, on the way to the waiting D&H canal boats at Hawley. Wangum Road is the old rail bed for the Pennsylvania Coal Company
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