Beartown Rocks, PA  (page 1)

 

 

July 29, 2004

Today my uncle, Robert Frank and I visited Beartown Rocks, in Jefferson County, Pennsylvania.  Beartown Rocks is a “Rock City.”  Here are found dozens of large blocks of sandstone, many the size of houses, separated by open pathways.  Atop these blocks and clinging to the sides of these blocks are a wide variety of trees, shrubs, and other plants.  Each block is like a small island resting on the forest floor.  The purpose of the trip today was to photograph some of these forest islands. 

 

 Beartown Rocks is a small area within Clear Creek State Forest, and managed by Clear Creek State Park.  It is located along Corbett Road about 3.5 miles northeast of Sigel, Pa at GPS Coordinates: 41.30339°N 79.05948°W.  The area is in the Appalachian Plateau Province, a series of long wavelength, low amplitude anticlines and synclines trending northeast/southwest.  The tops on many of the hills in the region are capped by the massively bedded, Pennsylvanian Age, Pottsville Sandstone/ Conglomerate.  Massively bedded means the individual beds are thick and the joints in the beds are widely spaced.  This is the geologic formation exposed at Beartown Rocks.  Here the Pottsville beds are up to 40 feet thick.  This is a hard rock that is not easily weathered.  

 

Landscape such as are present in this area develop when a stream eventually breaches the hard caprock at some point.  Then the stream rapidly cuts down through the softer rocks below.  As the stream cuts deeper the valley widens.  Pieces break off  the edge of the caprock and they are transported by mass wasting process downslope toward the stream, eventually to be eroded and transported away.  At this point surface erosion of the harder unit still continues across its entire exposure, but is relatively slow compared to the effects of the stream and the valley widening process.  The edge of the caprock essentially breaks off  until the caprock protecting, “holding up the hill” is all gone.  Then once the caprock is completely removed, the unprotected hill rapidly erodes.  A rock city forms where 1) there is a massively bedded hard caprock, and 2) there is just the right balance between rate of breakage from the edge of the caprock unit and the rate at which the broken pieces move downslope toward the stream.

 

 

 Beartown Rocks is a spectacular example of a rock city.  Other ones in northcentral Pennsylvania include Panther Rocks, near Brockway in Elk County, and Bilger’s Rocks, near Greensboro, in Clearfield County.  At Bilger’s Rocks the pathways between the rocks are narrow tight passages, barely wide enough to squeeze through.  At Beartown Rocks the gaps between the rock blocks are measured in feet to tens of feet. 

 

 None of the trees in the area are exceptionally old, but I love the gnarled roots reaching down the sides of the giant blocks to the forest floor below.  There are the tiny plants clinging and growing in narrow crevices on the sides of the blocks.  The area is heavly populated by whitetail deer.  The vegetation on the forest floor shows the effects of their browsing.  It is still healthy, but comparatively thin.  On top of the sandstone blocks are a riot of growth.  There are small trees- birch, oak, maple.  There are massive thickets of mountain laurel and great rhododendron.  There are profusions of ferns, mosses, lichens, and liverworts. 

 

These photos do not do the site justice, but give some idea of what I am talking about.   Beartown Rocks is a small site only a few acres in size, but well worth the visit.  The park has constructed a viewing platform atop one of the boulders giving a nice view of the surrounding landscape. I plan to go back to the site until I get all of the pictures I want.  For now these will have to do.

Ed Frank

All photographs by Edward Frank

 

Great Rhododendron growing in a small crevice.

 

Great Rhododendron

Robert Frank for scale.