Wooster Geologist at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania

BRYN MAWR, PENNSYLVANIA–While visiting my friends and colleagues Katherine and Pedro Marenco at Bryn Mawr College, I visited the nearby Valley Forge National Historical Park. Everyone will remember, of course that this is the place outside Philadelphia that the Continental Army made its rough winter quarters in 1777-1778. The huts above are reconstructions of the soldiers’ quarters on the windy and cold fields. Commander-in-Chief George Washington chose this place because it was easily defensible, had plenty of timber for construction and fuel, and was close enough to British-occupied Philadelphia to keep an eye on the enemy — yet not so close to be likely attacked.

As a geologist, of course, I also looked for the rocky bones beneath the landscape. They were easily found in the above cliff near the main parking area. This is the Ledger Dolomite, a Cambrian unit found throughout this part of eastern Pennsylvania.

The Ledger Dolomite here is distinguished by these fine laminations visible on its weathered cross-sections. These are apparently stromatolites: laminar structures built by bacterial mats. We’ve met Cambrian stromatolites before in this blog.

I was surprised to learn that there is also a significant middle Pleistocene fossil deposit in Valley Forge called the Port Kennedy Bone Cave. This is a sinkhole deposit within the Ledger Dolomite. A particularly large sinkhole apparently trapped a variety of animals, including the gracile sabre-tooth Smilodon gracilis, the skull of which is on display in the Valley Forge Historical Park visitor center. S. gracilis was the smallest and earliest member of its genus. The Port Kennedy Bone Cave was one of the first fossil assemblages that the famous paleontologist Edward Drinker Cope studied. The location was lost to science until its rediscovery in 2005.

This is the requisite cannon image, even though no battle was fought here. It is nevertheless a dramatic place for the privations the soldiers suffered during the darkest days of the Revolutionary War. It is hard to imagine the conditions in 1777-1778 now since highways and casinos surround the old encampment.