page_title: Geology of New Jersey
section_title: Ridge and Valley
hierarchical_section_title: Geology of New Jersey / Ridge and Valley
caption_attribution_description: English: Looking east from the ridge of Kittatinny Mountain in the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area, Walpack Township, Sussex County, New Jersey. Approximately 1 mile north from the gate for Fairview Lake Road at "Fiddler's Elbow."
context_page_description: New Jersey is a very geologically and geographically diverse region in the United States' Middle Atlantic region, offering variety from the Appalachian Mountains and the Highlands in the state's northwest, to the Atlantic Coastal Plain region that encompasses both the Pine Barrens and the Jersey Shore. The state's geological features have impacted the course of settlement, development, commerce and industry over the past four centuries.
  New Jersey has four distinct physiographic provinces. They are: the Atlantic Coastal Plain Province, the Piedmont Province, the Highlands Province, and the Ridge and Valley Province.
context_section_description: The smallest province in the state, it is confined to the northwest corner of the state. The Kittatinny Valley is a part of the Great Appalachian Valley and contain some of the oldest rocks of the province known as the Matinsburg shale created during the Ordovician period. At the edge of this valley is the Kittatinny Ridge which is from 1500 feet to 1800 feet. The ridge goes in a northeast-southwest axis.  Beyond this ridge,there are series of rolling hills and small ridges underlain by Silurian and Devonian aged rocks.
  The Kittatinny Ridge was created about four hundred million years ago when a small continent that was long and thin collided with proto North America. The  strike caused folding and faulting which cause the Silurian Shawnagunk conglomerate which is made mostly of quartz, to rise out of a shallow sea. The heat from pressure caused the quartz to bend, and silica melted the quartz granules together along with other stone.  Millions of years of erosion from rain, wind, snow, ice shaped the mountain and valley to its present configuration.  The Wisconsin glacier which started to form around 21,000 BC and started to melt in 13,000 BC left boulder fields, end moraines and a terminal moraine which starts north of Belvidere and goes east to just south of Great Meadow and continues east to just north of Budd Lake and continues east to Denviile where it goes southeast toward Morristown and goes around the south end of Great Swamp.
  The Delaware River is deflected by ridges and travels generally southwest, along the strike of the upturned beds of shale sedimentary rock. The Delaware flows in a riverbed of glacial till in the Minisink and Walpack buried valleys, formed from erosion of softer bedrock, then passes through the Delaware Water Gap in Kittatinny Mountain,
  a continuation of Blue Mountain in Pennsylvania. The buried valleys extend beyond the riverbed and stretch across the state from Pennsylvania to New York.
  The limestones in this area also exhibit karst topography, including sinkholes and small caves.
caption: Looking east from the ridge of Kittatinny Mountain in Walpack Township
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