Three Falls Forest is 175 acres of remnant woodland between Seneca Turnpike and Sweet Road in the southwest corner of the Town of Manlius. This fragment of forgotten forest harbors unexpected treasures, hidden in suburbs southeast of Syracuse, only seven miles from downtown. Just to the west is the largest open pit mine in the eastern USA: the Jamesville quarry.
Largely invisible and unknown, this surviving woodland shelters many magnificent features, including an Ancient Forest Cathedral in a Sinkhole Sanctuary, the Three Falls themselves, 200-year-old Lime Kiln antiquities, and cliffs and ledges of the Onondaga Escarpment, with post-glacial meltwater landforms such as hanging waterfalls and plungepool lakes.
One feature of Three Falls Forest that is easy to miss—or to discount on sight—are the Bluestones—jumbled piles of powder blue rocks. At first glance,
these stone humps seem to be chaotic piles of tailings—rock dumps left by very early limestone miners. But more careful, thorough review leads to a conclusion these rock piles are an exposed upper edge of a thin shelf of a rather extra-ordinary layer of bedrock.
Onondaga Escarpment
over the edge
Three Falls Forest is near the east end of the Onondaga Escarpment—limestone ledges that cross the north end of the Finger Lakes. This line of low limestone cliffs form the foothills of the Alleghany Highlands of southern New York.
The upper ledge of the Onondaga Escarpment is the hard, durable Onondaga Limestone Formation, which was created 450 to 550 million years ago in the Devonian Era by an outburst of biological life in Earth's early ocean. In a geological time of warmer oceans, tiny single-cell organisms flourished by extracting energy from minerals dissoved in seawater.
Onondaga Escarpment
layers of stone under the land
Three Falls Forest, Manlius, NY
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Limestone is the fossil shells of tiny cells that lived and died in the ancient ocean. In death, their micro-crystalline bodies fell to the seafloor to accumulate in steadily thicker sediments. Their crystal shells were compressed tightly together, and cemented into dense, durable, fossil bedrock mostly consisting of calcium carbonate (CaCO3).
Thus, this layer of limestone in the bedrock records a time when biological life blossomed in Earth's earliest ocean. And thus, the bony shells of life in Earth's ancient sea became the Onondaga Escarpment—the bones of a post-glacial landscape.
Bones of the Earth
layers of the land
Geology divides the Onondaga Limestone Formation into four thinner beds—Seneca, Moorehouse, Nedrow, Edgecliff—each from eight to 20 feet thick. The chemical composition, mineral structure and industrial value of each bed varies greatly. Some is shale-like and breaks apart easily; others contain gypsum (magnesium sulphate: MgSO4). Chert occurs in some layers.
The lower ledge of the Onondaga Escarpment is formed by the Manlius Limestone Formation, which is thicker—often over 100 feet—but generally weaker, more shaley and poorer quality than Onondaga Limestone.
Between these two limestone formations, a thin layer of Oriskany Sandstone is sometimes found—up to five feet thick in some areas, but often absent from the geological strata. Could this mystery stone in Three Falls Forest be blue sandstone?
Limestone & Bluestone
edge of the Onondaga Escarpment
Three Falls Forest, Manlius, NY
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End of an Ice Age
post-glacial meltwaters
As the last Ice Age ended, vast volumes of water, melting ice and grit plunged over Onondaga Limestone cliffs on the north edge of the Onondaga Escarpment in a waterfall surpassing Niagara Falls in size, if not height. Post-glacial meltwater scoured smooth and polished the upper surface of the Onondaga Limestone, then thundered over the Escarpment edge in a massive cataract, which scoured away softer bedrock below the limestone ledge.
This meltwter erosion exposed an extra-ordinary bed of Bluestone bedrock—a remarkable "ringing rock" that seems too lie along a crucial crease in the land. This stone's rare blue hue boldly marks an undisturbed fragment of post-glacial topography, a unique botanical zone, a higher energy sacred site—all three in one small, narrow, tightly defined geological area.
The extra-ordinary blue hue of these rocks caught my attention first. Their remarkable rich color in an autumn landscape of gray, brown and black started a series of questions about these stone piles. The first was about their color.
NOTICE
Restricted Access
These woods are privately owned.
Respect the owner's stewardship of this forest:
step lightly
take nothing away
leave no disturbance
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Blue is rather rare in rocks, even in bright colored bedrock of the Painted Desert of the Southwest. But this blue is pure and rich—not washed out, dark or greenish, but a bold, bright, pastel blue.
An immediate question arises: "What elements impart that specific blue hue?" This blue is too light to be cobalt, and shows no sign of weathering into greenish copper oxides. Bluestone mined in the Catskill region of the Hudson Valley is rich in strontium. Is strontium the extra element in Manlius Bluestone?
Fractal Forest in the Forest
micro-zonal ecological community on a stone
Three Falls Forest, Manlius, NY
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The elements in a rock also define its crystal symmetries. And thus, this geometry determines the stone's fracturing angles.
Unique Habitat
ancient micro-zonal community
Seemingly, the blue of these stones hasn't faded or shaded at all despite long-term, full exposure to sun, water, ice, and other weathering. This Bluestone seems to resist normal weathering, including fracturing and shattering from freezing and thawing. Bluestone also doesn't seem to dissolve in water or acid, as does limestone. The texture is smooth, and far more fine-grained than most limestone or sandstone.
These Bluestone not only are hardly affected by weathering, they also resist and inhibit vegetation. Not much grows on them. They are bare, bald and exposed because plants don't grow—or grow well—on this rock. This sparseness of vegetation is in sharp contrast to limestone and dolomite, which richly encourage plant growth, and are usually covered by thick carpets of moss, lichen and tiny proto-plants.
Unique Vegetation
tiny herb & yellow moss cling to bare rock
Three Falls Forest, Manlius, NY
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The very few trees rooted in Bluestone are stunted and brittle-looking. I saw no lichen or simple plants, and what moss grows on bluestone is thin, coarse and yellow. Among the yellow moss, a few miniature herbs grow, but they are unfamiliar, often with red, blue and other hues beside chlorophyll green. The best plant specimens growing on bluestone are maidenhair ferns, but even they are smaller than elsewhere in the forest.
These observations encourage belief Bluestone isn't calcium-rich limestone, but silica or another mineral. Yellow moss and odd-colored herbs suggest the rock is poor in magnesium, the key mineral co-factor in chlorophyll, the molecule that starts photosynthesis to convert sunshine into sugar—solar energy into carbon chemistry.
Plants growing on Bluestone should be considered very unusual—perhaps rare—because they have evolved and specialized to survive on the different diet of Bluestone's unusual chemical elements.
Maidenhair Fern
grows on the Bluestone ledge
Three Falls Forest, Manlius, NY
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On the Edge
seeing post-glacial history
To casual hikers, these humps of Bluestone appear to be haphazard heaps of disordered rocks—perhaps undesirable, low quality stone piled up by early limestone miners, who, in the process, also dug the deep trenches below the cliffs on either side. But an astute observer of natural topography and geology soon realizes these piles and ditches are not man-made at all, but natural features.
The stones are tightly packed together in orderly ways, but not by ordinary geometry. Because Bluestone has irregular, acute fracture angles compared to limestone, dolomite or shale, Bluestone breaks in angular shards
instead of blocks and slabs. These less orderly, more angular shapes present a jumbled, disorganized image at first glance.
A series of these low humps of Bluestone lie in a line below the upper cliffs of the Onondaga Escarpment. These Bluestone piles are the uppermost edge of a thin layer of bedrock that lies underneath the Onondaga Limestone Formation. This deeper strata of Bluestone was exposed by the post-glacial river pouring over the limestone cliffs. This exposed edge traces westward nearly to Sweet Road, and east toward the Sinkhole Sanctuary.
Humps of Bluestone
three of many piles along the ciff base
Three Falls Forest, Manlius, NY
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No more than half a mile of this unusual stone seems to be exposed, although it is currently difficult to conduct a more thorough and extensive survey.
Blue Light
name that chakra
If this Bluestone ledge is Oriskany Sandstone, it's a color I've not seen in other specimens, which were gray, brown. reddish, or orange. Oriskany Sandstone is not consistently found under the Onondaga Limestone, and is completely absent in some areas. Is this Bluestone a small area of unique color and quality of Oriskany Sandstone?
One investigator commented, "What we have here could be Devonian sedimentary sandstone, not limestone. It formed 410 million years ago, and is largely silica, with quartzite cement, which endows incredible strength. Common bluestone is often mined from upper or outer layers, close to the top of a quarry, and usually has variations in color, which range from rusts through greens to dark grey, etc. The blue we see here indicates a much deeper vein, with little exposure to freezing or thawing. However, because of the easy fracturing and angle-splintering, I need to study this more."
Post-Glacial History
ravines below the cliffs
Near their west end, these humps of hard, blue rock are flanked on both sides by deep trenches, beyond which are sheer vertical limestone cliffs. These ditches are as deep as the cliffs are high. In the photo at left, the Onondaga Limestone cliffs are
Onondaga Limestone Cliffs
below the cliffs is a deep trench
Three Falls Forest, Manlius, NY
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clearly visible. What doesn't show in this photo is the deep trench at the base of these cliffs—as deep as the cliffs is high. This pair of trenches run east-to-west on either side of the Bluestone—not just the upslope side under the escarpment cliifs.
Careful study of this unexpected topography leads to three unusual—even startling—conclusions.
First, this area was not mined, but scoured out by post-glacial waters. Early in the glacier's recession, water sheeted over the edge of the limestone ledge. Falling water pounded the rocks below, and gouged out a channel that ran to west along the base of the cliffs—toward what is now Sweet Road. This lateral runoff below the cliffs wore away a ravine that is deeper as it travels west. The hard, insoluble ledge of bluestone resisted erosion to remain—like a stone dam—flanked by two channels for water from the falls to flow to the west.
Second, this seems to be a still-intact, post-glacial landscape, undisturbed by major human activity. The topography looks pretty much how it appeared 10,000 years ago when the melting glacier receded to open a lower drainage channel below the cliffs of the upper escarpment. Suddenly—almost overnight—the huge waterfall dried up and vanished as the water levels subsided. The land and topography have changed very little since the day the water level dropped. Today, Three Falls Forest still offers visitors snapshots of 10,000-year-old post-glacial landscapes at the edge of the Escarpment.
Very few places remain along the Escarpment where pristine post-glacial landscape is preserved without human disruption. This Bluestone ledge appears—unexpectedly—to not only be one—but a most curious one.
Post-Glacial Trench
south edge of the Bluestone ledge
Three Falls Forest, Manlius, NY
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Beyond the Edge
land unto itself
Third, it seems erosion by post-glacial meltwater accelarated along this Bluestone outcropping, cutting a lateral notch into the limestone ledge. Perhaps there was a in the overlying Onondaga Limestone that allowed water to penetrate and widen into a creavice, and then ever wider into a ravine lined by cliffs.
Eventually, this lateral slice carved away a section of the limestone ledge, separating it from the main body of the Escarpment—cutting off a chunk, creating, in effect, an island capped by limestone—what they call a "butte" in the Southwest desert. And thus, one section of this Bluestone outcropping has deep trenches and limestone cliffs on both sides, not just the south side facing the Escarpment cliffs.
Thus, an island was created beyond the north edge of the Escarpment, somewhat like Goat Island between American and Canadian sections of today's Niagara Falls. It is an odd, meaning-filled anomaly that such a splinter of land would be preserved from this prehistoric Ice Age landscape.
Miniature Herb & Moss
growing on the Bluestone ledge
Three Falls Forest, Manlius, NY
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For 10,000 years, Three Falls Forest has sheltered an undisturbed memory in stone of this brief post-glacial island at the edge between areas and eras of geological history. Such a point of land is almost always a place of power—a focal point for geological, subtle and spiritual energies of the living earth.
Higher Purpose
art, aesthetics and Earth
As sacred space, subtle energies and spirit of a place are what command our attention. As a dowser, in four limited hikes along this edge of the Escarpment, I have already detected conditions that make me wrinkle my brow and shake my head. I refuse to say much more until I conduct a more careful, thorough and complete survey of this Bluestone ridge and limestone island.
In the Northeast, other Bluestone outcroppings are mined, but for aesthetic virtues that are higher than those of limestone. The latter is mostly cut into building blocks, or crushed and burned to make cement dust—binder in plastic rock we call "concrete." Limestone is a fairly dull, structural stone that lacks luster, color and polish.
Miniature Herbs & Moss
growing on the Bluestone ledge
Three Falls Forest, Manlius, NY
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But Bluestone can be chiseled, carved and sculpted into statues—into art forms and ornate designs. Bluestone is prized for architectural ornaments. We may construct the building with limestone, but we embelish it with bluestone ornaments and statues. And Bluestone is sold as a distinctive, colorful paving stone. This higher aesthetic value highlights the implicit "higher energy" quality of this rock.
Higher Vibration
ringing rocks
But the most fascinating feature of Bluestone was discovered by unplanned coincidence when one stone was dropped back onto the pile. When the falling stone struck the bedrock, they emitted brief tinkles of ringing tones. This musical quality of Bluestone arises from its brittleness. These stones have a rigid, crystalline structure that imparts resonance to each rock. When they are struck, these rocks ring—and they ring at very high frequencies.
This crystalline quality and resonance is a characteristic sought by stone sculptors. A skilled sculptor tests the strength and resilience of a candidate for carving by listening to the ring of the rock. The quality of ringing communicates to the artist the integrity and clarity of the stone, offering an audibl glimpse at the soul of the stone.
Now, while many crystalline rocks will ring when struck, few will continue ring so strongly, clearly, sharply after long-term direct exposure to weathering by sunshine, water, wind, and ice. My first impression was that these rocks remain very resonant and alive with vibration despite lying exposed to harsh climate for thousands of years. I've only listened once to one stone from one pile, so this begs for further field investigation.
The notion of "ringing rocks" and "musical stones" invokes an ancient wisdom that the highest value of art is as music—as vibration—the voice of spirit. And the ultimate purpose of art is to inspire and uplift the human condition to conceive and receive divine perfection. Perhaps someone will test the ring frequency of a lot of bluestones to create a complete musical scale of tuned notes. Then maybe a musician can compose a score to perform with this geological musical instrument. I envision creating music for meditation—a "stoned symphony" or a "ringing rock raga."
The Upper Escarpment
in the ravine below Three Falls
Three Falls Forest, Manlius, NY
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Bluestone bedrock is an unusual—perhaps rare—geological structure, wth artist more tha industrial value. This unusual natural resource adds odd weight to arguments Three Falls Forest is too unique a natural area to blast, bulldoze and backfill into a housing subdivision. The unusual, if not unique, plant species growing on Bluestone make it a rare botanical habitat—further reason to protect and preserve this land stand of forest ecosystem.
Songs of the Earth
awaken to the living land
More deeply than such scientific and economic rationales to preserve this remarkable landscape, this ridge of ringing rocks offers a metaphysical—a glimpse of a spiritual—reason to keep these wooded and rocky slopes in their natural state. It seems this Bluestone ledge connects the two most sacred sites in Three Falls Forest. One is the Sinkhole Sanctuary on the east, near the Three Falls ravine. The other is an area below the Escarpment on the west side—along Sweet Road—where I detected an extra-ordinary configuration of ley lines, underground caverns and waterflows—what may prove the biggest "(K)not-hole" in the Onondaga watershed.
Imagine the land is a living, vibrating matrix of energy—with linking lines woven over the landscape to interconnect at nodes—at sacred sites and energy centers in the living landscape anatomy. Then this Bluestone ridge anchors a special band of higher frequencies in this subtle energy system—like a crystal resonator acts to switch a node in electronic circuits.
Some may mine this Bluestone to sell as statuary and pavement to inspire and entertain as public art. I prefer to visit this sacred site on Vision Quest—to connect with the conscious intelligence that is the Earth, and gain insight into my path, my burden, my destiny through the world ahead—and the lives still coming from behind. I still find essential virtue to come into conscious connection with the Earth in innocence and awareness—like a child climbing into the lap of it's Mother. More and more, Three Falls Forest impresses me as a land with tremendous depth, history and power of a higher mental and metaphysical order. This sacred space seems certain to be a rare place to access spiritual unity with the land.
Secret of Southwest Manlius
For many years, Three Falls Forest was quietly protected by a common belief in a Covenant placed on the deed by quarry owner Allied Chemical that promised "no new and different future use of the Manlius lands, other than to leave said lands in their natural state," and created a buffer between the quarry and residences in the Town. Thus, this inaccessible woodland retreat became a well-kept secret among neighbors. With five miles of trails to hike, jog, ski, showshoe, bird watch, and explore, Three Falls Forest was an unofficial recreation park for Manlius residents. With over 65 species of mosses and many ferns clinging to thin topsoil on limestone ledges, cliffs and boulders, this was an unofficial nature preserve.
Currently, Three Falls Forest is threatened. A private developer acquired the land from Allied in 1989, and plans to build 180 houses on this fragile, unique post-glacial landscape. A geological treasure and unique micro-habitat will be leveled for another subdivision. in the Town of Manlius. A pristine common space with eons of Earth's ancient history written in its topography and geology will be flattened by bulldozers and hard fill, and ultimately chopped into private lots and paved roads.
Uncertain Future
preservation or devastation?
Very soon, bulldozers will flatten this unique forest—the last intact natural community in Manlius. Flowforrn glacial topography formed in ten thousand years of geological history will disappear under hard fill for building lots, lawns, driveways, and roads. Unless an intervention occurs, this unique habitat and special refuge for biodiversity will be extinct. Longstanding members of our local natural community will be evicted. In some cases, entire families will be refused their home or any place by the human community.
This end to their local sylvan sanctuary mobilized residents to form Manlius Greenspace Coalition to advocate Three Falls Forest as a unique geological, biological, ecological, and historical resource that needs protection. This extra-ordinary natural area should be carefully developed as a permanent Nature Preserve. Clearly, there is much here to protect and preserve—and extend. Realizing they are witnessing "the end of Nature" in their own community, Coalition members meet frequently to collect more information and devise a unified preservation plan.
So, the wraps are off the secret of Sweet Road—the backyard wilderness known simply as "Three Falls Forest". Tuesday, August 2, 2005 the Syracuse Post Standard featured a page one story:
