Audio
Fayette Station Road Auto Tour Chapter 3
Transcript
Chapter 3 Long before the age of dinosaurs, about 300 million years ago, trees, ferns, fungi, mosses, and lichens flourished in this area in a vast, flat, humid swamp. When the plants in these dense forests died, they decomposed in swampy, stagnant water. Over millions of years, their remains became peat bogs and ultimately coal. You see, coal is peat that has naturally hardened and turned into rock underground. The process is called coalification. As layers of sediments—thousands of feet thick—covered the peat bogs, the temperature of the bog layers gradually rose because of all of the pressure. The peat in the buried bogs cooked at very high temperatures for millions of years. In the New River area, the peat bogs became a high grade of coal, which would ultimately be used to fuel steel mills, heat homes, and fire the boilers of trains and ships around the world!
The coal in the gorge was deep underground and inaccessible, until about 100 million years ago when an ancient river, called the Teays, started to flow north from the uplifted Appalachians. Through millions of years, several ice ages and thaws, the Teays flowed through this area and ultimately west to the Mississippi, carving down and exposing layer upon layer of sedimentary rock—such as sandstone, shale, and coal. The twisting path of the New River follows the historical course of the ancestral Teays, and continues to carve and erode the gorge today.
As you approach the New River Gorge Bridge, you will see several pull-offs on the left. If you want to take the opportunity to learn more about the bridge, geology, rock climbing, and coal mining of this area, park and read the interpretive exhibits. The road is narrow here, so please be careful if you walk along the road between the pull-offs.
[music begins by fading in] Stop the recording now and enjoy the views. Re-start the recording as you pass under the New River Gorge Bridge. [music fades out quickly] [after a pause, music starts, and fades out slowly]
Description
Chapter 3: Rt. 82 to under NRG Bridge (north)
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