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SHORAKKOPOCH

ACCORDING TO LEGEND ON THIS SITE ON THE
PRINCIPAL MANHATTAN INDIAN VILLAGE, PETER MINUIT
IN 1626, PURCHASED MANHATTAN ISLAND FOR TRINKETS
AND BEADS THEN WORTH ABOUT 60 GUILDERS.

THIS BOULDER ALSO MARKS THE SPOT WHERE
A TULIP TREE (LIRIODENDRON TULIPIFERA) GREW TO A HEIGHT
OF 165 FEET AND A GIRTH OF 20 FEET. IT WAS UNTIL
ITS DEATH IN 1953 AT THE AGE OF 280 YEARS THE
LAST LIVING LINK WITH THE RECKGAWAWANC INDIANS
WHO LIVED HERE.

DEDICATED AS PART OF
NEW YORK CITY’S 300^TH ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION
BY THE PETER MINUIT POST 1247, AMERICAN LEGION
JANUARY 1954

Peter Minuit bought the island of Manhattan from the Indians for 60 Dutch guilders,
Purchase of Manhattan | Translation of the letter | The Romance  [USGS topomaps NY]

The Palisades Sill geology

Manhattan Schist foliation strikes N36E, glacial striations trend N11W.
(For NY 10040, Declination = 13°29' W changing by 0° 0' W/year

[Manhattan Schist (Om = Tipppecanoe Sequence) and crops out in northern Manhattan and the west Bronx  This unit is composed of brown-to rusty-weathering, fine- to medium-grained, typically massive, muscovite-biotite-quartz-plagioclase-kyanite-sillimanite-garnet schist containing interlayers centimeters to meters thick of calcite+diopside marble (minerals are listed in decreasing order of abundance).  The lower unit is lithically correlative with the Middle Ordovician Manhattan member A of Hall (1968a) because it is a direct lithostratigraphic correlative and is found interlayered with the underlying Inwood at two (possibly three) localities, often containing interlayers of calcite ("Balmville") marble near its base.  Because it is interpreted as being autochthonous (depositionally above the Inwood Marble), Merguerian informally refers to it as "the Good-Old Manhattan Schist" and has assigned a middle Ordovician age.]---Merguerian

Erratic of Palisades diabase.

During the last Ice Age, summer glacial-meltwater pouring down a crevasse in the icesheet swirled pebbles to erode this hilltop pothole into the plucked-slope side of a roches moutonnée of Manhattan Schist in Inwood Park, northen tip of Manhattan island, NY. Student Jennifer Krysiak provides a scale for this pothole that was cut into rock on one of its sides (which the photgraph shows) and on its other side into glacial ice (which melted away during the retreat of the icesheet).

Walking up to the "Indian Shelter" caves on the plucked-slope side of  a roches moutonnées of
Manhattan Schist in Inwood Park, northen tip of Manhattan island, NY.

Parasitic folds (synform and antiform) in a boulder of Manhattan Schist that are indicatative for this region.
of an open-fold style.(photo by Monica Thomas)

[Inwood Marble (C - Oi).  Several lithologies occur such as:

coarse-grained dolomitic marble,
fine-grained calcite marble,
foliated calc-schist,
marble containing siliceous layers, and
calc-silicate aggregates that stand in relief as knots on the weathered surface.  

The marble ranges from white to blue-white to gray-white.  Depending on the amount of impurities, it weathers gray or tan and produces a sugary-textured surface on outcrops which ultimately develops into a residual calcareous sand.  In addition, the outcrops illustrate differential weathering with dolomite-silicate units standing in high relief and calcite marble forming depressions. The Inwood trends N45°E, 73°SE]---Merguerian