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Cucumber Falls, Ohiopyle State Park, Pennsylvania

This is a 30-foot (9.1 m) bridal veil waterfall on Cucumber Run, a small creek which flows into the Youghiogheny River.

 

Water cascades over a lip of coarse-grained sandstone of the Allegheny Formation at Ohiopyle State Park. Beneath the sandstone, finer-grained rocks including shale and a thin coal bed are visible. The Allegheny Formation is an important coal-bearing formation in western Pennsylvania.

 

The name of the stream, Cucumber Run, by the way, isn't because it is shaped like a cucumber, is the color of a cucumber, or has the smell of a cucumber. Actually the name has nothing to do with cucumbers at all. Cucumber Run is named for the abundance of one species of magnolia tree, the cucumber magnolia ( Magnolia acuminate ), that still is found in the watershed.

 

The rock formation that gives rises to Cucumber Falls is the Pottsville Sandstone or Pottsville Formation. The Pennsylvanian (323.2 million years ago to 298.9 million years ago) Pottsville Formation is a mapped bedrock unit in Pennsylvania, western Maryland, West Virginia, and Ohio. The formation is also recognized in Alabama. It is a major ridge-former in the Ridge-and-Valley Appalachians of the eastern United States. The Pottsville Formation is conspicuous at many sites along the Allegheny Front, the eastern escarpment of the Allegheny or Appalachian Plateau.

 

The Pottsville Formation consists of a gray conglomerate, fine to coarse grained sandstone, and is known to contain limestone, siltstone and shale, as well as anthracite and bituminous coal. It is considered a classic orogenic molasse. The formation was first described from a railroad cut south of Pottsville, Pennsylvania.

 

 

www.dcnr.state.pa.us/topogeo/field/pnhp/pnhpsites/cucumbe...

triblive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/focus/s_539295.html#axzz36v...

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pottsville_Formation

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Uploaded on June 27, 2014
Taken on June 26, 2014