Manhattan Before Manhattan: Ontario in New York? A Rocky Question.

Most images of Manhattan focus on its world class skyline and numerous commercial and cultural attractions.  Broader shots of the island as a whole, usually taken from the Empire State Building, show a rather rectangular flat island crowded over in all but Central Park.  In reality, however, the New York area, even Manhattan island, is an incredibly beautiful natural landscape featuring everything from mountains and forests to prairies and lovely beaches.  Before the urban core of New York was paved over it featured a very attractive paradise which lured both First and Second Born alike to her shores.  Most of her natural features have long since been transformed; even where nature seems to persist (such as in Central Park) the world has been carefully groomed and altered to human tastes.  Some protected areas, such as Fire Island, contain remnants of what the early Dutch colonists found here.  Pine barrens persist in central Long Island, and the New Jersey Meadowlands have so far still largely eluded development.

Most enduring of all, however, would be the geological features of the area.  While human development has generally preferred flat spaces for urban growth, the fact remains that the rocky Earth still manages to defy modern engineering when using its own weapon of economics against itself.  A cliff is too expensive to level, and large outcrops of granite, gabbro, and other fun ancient stuff is just too much of a pain in the ass to constantly dynamite.  One of the most impressive features to be seen from the big city, right in it in fact, would be the Palisades, sheer cliffs that confront many westward views across the Hudson River into New Jersey.

The lower deck, westbound, of the George Washington Bridge (I-95) looking toward New Jersey and those majestic Palisades.  You can see views like this from upper Manhattan northwards for some distance, until around the Tappan Zee Bridge.  

Perhaps I have always been focused enough on the natural world to notice the contours of the land and natural features even when surrounded by human grandeur, but one of the first things I noticed when emerging from Penn Station in my first ever trip to New York was the beginnings of those cliffs as I stared all the way down 33rd street and across the Hudson.  I always subconsciously imagined New York as being flat and nothing but buildings, even if my reading had told me otherwise.  When I left the city after that first visit, I took the Empire State line clear back to Buffalo and was able to see the entire length of the tidal Hudson north to Troy, including going underground past what looked remarkably like the rocks of the Canadian Shield so very far to the north.  The great city, riddled with sewer and subway tunnels, was carved into a very rocky heart that looked like it could have been pulled out of northern Ontario or Quebec.

The inspiration for this post, in fact, came from a very Shield looking outcrop that I passed along the Harlem River, not too far opposite from Yankee Stadium.  It even had quartz veins in it!  I could not snap a picture because I was focused on dealing with the insane traffic, but thankfully Google streetview helped me find again what really took me by surprise.

To find this and other outcrops, simply look anywhere along Harlem River Drive or the stretch of I-95 in Manhattan.  

I mean come on, the thing could very well be something one can find in Ontario!  The actual stuff is too young by far to hold a candle to that Shield rock, however.  What you see is probably only 500 million years old, even if it does have schist and gneiss in there, even a little bit of marble.  The ancient Shield can be found relatively close by, 150 miles away in the Adirondacks, a detached part of the Laurentian Mountains.  Billion year old granite, which not part of the geological core of the continent, can be found even closer in the strip of Appalachians which the Hudson forces through in between West Point and Sing Sing Prison.

Forgive the fuzziness, it was dusk.  This is along I-87 southbound, pretty close to where New York's suburbs start.  

That's right, the mountains of the east come within a mere twenty miles of the concrete jungle.  The Appalachian trail passes through here on a pedestrian bridge over I-87, and is among the lowest elevation (and most urban) of stretches of the otherwise wilderness oriented trail.  It can be amusing to think that some tourists are camping out and even sleeping under the stars even as others are posting photos of Time's Square from their mobile devices not a few dozen miles away.  Even in New York we can find ourselves still trying to interact with our wild world which is never truly far away.