The Clinton lower yellow shales and lower lime shales both show along the crest of Chestnut ridge here whose anticlinal has decreased so much as to carry down the Ore sandstone before reaching the river southwest of Matawan. The lower Salina rocks show in the south side of the ridge dipping 40° southeast, and the back valley road to Lewistown runs largely through the valley of upper Salina lime shale showing green and olive shale beds, but containing also several thin beds from 2′ to 4′ thick, of impure limestone, which in places has been quarried and burned for farm use on account of its proximity to the place of consumption.
An excellent exposure of the Bloomsburg red shales, 125′ thick in one uninterrupted exposure, Was seen near the school house at Yoder’s place. The dip is to the northwest at angles of 30° and 35° passing under the upper Salina measures in the synclinal, and succeeded southwards by lower Clinton red and olive beds, making an anticlinal with north and south dips of 60° and 70° near the forks of the road. This axis may mark the western extension of the great Shade mountain axis of Snyder and Eastern Juniata county although its force and importance died out in the great bend of the river south of Lewistown.
Limestone quarries.
The Lewistown limestone formation has nowhere been very extensively quarried through Oliver township, although the reason for this is not very clear. The most southern outcrop extends along the south base of the first Oriskany ridge in a very straight line from the magnificent exposure already described north of Strode’s Mill to the northern limits of McVeytown, where it deflects slightly to the southwest and after making three laps along the Wayne township line it finally passes out of the township just north of Ryde Station.
S. Caufman’s farm, a short mile west of Strode’s mill, has upon it a small quarry of rather impure limestone, opened near the base of the formation, and the ridge about 300 yards north of the pike and a little west of his house.
