Earth and Environment Atlas

How The Planet Works
Sign In
Text size
100%
Theme
Geological Formations

Kittatinny Valley

Erosional and Karst Formations

Citation Formats

General Reference

APA Style

BibTeX

Kittatinny Valley is a section of the Great Appalachian Valley in northwestern New Jersey, lying between Kittatinny Mountain to the northwest and the New Jersey Highlands to the southeast, in Sussex and Warren counties. It is about 64 kilometers long and 16 to 21 kilometers wide, floored mainly by Martinsburg Formation shale and slate alongside Kittatinny and Jacksonburg limestone. The valley and its bordering ridge trace back to the Taconic Orogeny around 450 million years ago, when a volcanic island arc collided with proto-North America, with a later continental collision around 400 million years ago folding and faulting the rock into its present form. During the Wisconsin glaciation, ice up to 300 meters thick covered the valley and left behind end moraines, eskers, and lakes such as Culver's Lake and the 110-foot-deep Lake Aeroflex; today the Paulinskill, Wallkill, and Pequest rivers drain the valley.

Sources
Comments (0)
No comments yet. Be the first to share a thought.
Reader Challenges (0 open reader challenges)
No disputes yet. Spotted an error or a better source? Open the first one.

View At A Past Year

The atlas records no dated fact of its own for this entry, so there is no other year to choose.