But before you go, how about some home history?¹-

Harrisonburg sits sandwiched in the Shenandoah Valley between two ridges. All the geology here is part of The Valley and Ridge Province, one of five geologic provinces that comprise Virginia. The eastern ridge is the Massanutten syncline, visible in town as the unmiskakable sloping profile of Massanutten Mountain. A glimpse of Virginia's digital relief map shows that the Massanutten ridge is not the eastern border of the Shenandoah Valley, but only a small range protruding through the middle of it. West of town is the Alleghany front, but the great sweep of the Valley between hides a clear view.

Harrisonburg straddles two large folds that are seperated by a minor reverse thrust fault. Western Harrsionburg covers the Long Glade Syncline, stacked bottom up with the Edinburg, Oranda and Martinsburg formations. About 500 million years ago sediment--that would someday be the limestone/shale, shale and sandstone beds (respectively) visible throughout town-- drifted to the depths of a large ocean, the Protoatlantic. This quiet deposition predicted the approach of a terrific collision to the East coast shores. Click on the formation names to discover more about the Taconic Orogeny and its small place in Virginia's geologic history.

To the East of Harrisonburg, near 81, is the Middlebrook Anticline. Pushed to the surface in this structure are the New Market, Lincolnshire, and Edinburg Formations. Strewn casually in most fields around Harrisonburg, these beds of micritic limestone and calcareous shale provide further evidence that about 560 million years ago, Harrisonburg sat in the muddy depths of a Protoatlantic Ocean. Notice that these beds were deposited before the beds of the Long Glade Syncline, and the lack of clastics in them indicates a Divergant Continental Margin. Even though all these beds were deposited horizontally, like a stack of pankakes, folding since that depositional period allows them to protrude through to the surface where they are visible today.The folds in Rockingham county trend Northeast, like the ridges that follow the trace of the Valley.

West of town, between Massanutten Springs and Keezletown, runs the Pulaski- Staunton Fault. Though presently inactive, this fault dips east and trends Northeast a distance of about sixty five miles, and with its displacement of between 2000- 4000 feet, it pushed to the surface some of the dolomites and limestones of the Elbrook and Conococheague Formations (respectively). Geologists determined the age of this fault by using the principle of cross-cutting relations. To help visualize this mesh of folding and faulting, click on the geologic map below to see a cross- section of the Harrsionburg area.