Description of the New York City District

DESCRIPTION OF THE NEW YORK CITY DISTRICT. -By F. J. H. Merrill, N. H. Dartoii, Arthur Hollick, B. D. Salisbury, li. E. Dodge, Bailey Willis, and H. A. Pressey. GENERAL GEOGRAPHY OF THE DISTRICT. By Richard E. Dodge and Bailey Willis. Position. The district described in tins folio is Gedney, and Main channels. Ambrose and Swash Harlem River and Spuyten Duyvil Creek the Coastal Plain in general are low peninsulas sepa bounded by the meridians of 78° 45' and 74° 15' channels have a least depth of 3-J- fathoms, while water is but 2 to 3^ fathoms deep. rated by estuaries, in which the tide ebbs and west longitude from Greenwich and the parallels Gedney and Main channels are nowhere less than Newark Bay is an extensive water body, but it flows. These peninsulas are composed of beds of of 40° 30' and 41° north latitude. It covers one- 5 fathoms deep. Within the bar the Lower Bay i is not available for sea-going commerce, as the clay, sand, and gravel, or mixtures of these mate quarter of a square degree, equivalent, in this is from 4 to 12 fathoms deep well out from shore, depth is but 2 fathoms or less, except in a little rials constituting loam, and are extensively devel latitude, to 905.27 square miles. The map is but toward the New Jersey and Staten Island j channel near the outlet connecting with the Kill oped in Maryland, Delaware, and New Jersey. divided into four atlas sheets, called the Paterson, shores the water shoals to 3 fathoms or less over \ van Kull. This channel and the Kull carry 5 The width of the Coastal Plain decreases from Harlem, Brooklyn, and Staten Island sheets, each extensive areas. In the Narrows the depth is as j fathoms, while the Arthur Kill is generally shal 110 miles southeast of Baltimore to 12 miles measuring fifteen minutes of latitude and fifteen much as 20 fathoms, and the channel of the low. southeast of New York City. minutes of longitude. The district lies in two Hudson carries from 5 to 12 fathoms far up the Relief. Relief is the term used to designate The Coastal Plain is not clearly apparent in the States, New Jersey and New York, comprising river. This channel, though broad, is well defined the unevenness of the surface of the land A vicinity of New York City. The rocks that to parts of the counties of Passaic, Bergen, Essex, the south constitute this plain are here buried by Hudson, and Union in New Jersey, and West- ! later deposits. These surface deposits are mostly Chester, New York, Kings, Queens, and Rich of glacial origin, and occur in two distinct phases. mond in New York. Within it lie many towns One is found in the high and irregular ridge of and boroughs, as well as the cities of Paterson, Long and Staten islands; the other in the frontal Newark, Jersey City, Hoboken, Yonkers, Mount plain lying south and southeast of the ridge, and Vernon, New Rochelle, and all of New York City varying in width from less than a mile on Staten except a small portion on Long Island east of Island to about 9 miles in the eastern part of the Little Neck Bay and Far Rockaway. According district. The Coastal Plain exists in this section,.; to the census of 1900, 4,560,800 persons reside as a plain, only beneath the sea, forming what is within its limits. known as the continental shelf, which extends off Drainage. Drainage is a word here used to shore for nearly 100 miles. This submerged por designate all streams, ponds, tidal ways, and bays tion is now receiving the deposits of land waste of the district. The central axis, about which the brought down by rivers and tidal currents, while features of New York and vicinity are grouped, the emerged portion has been so modified in form is the channel of the Hudson River, which, during its later history that it is only structurally extending southward beyond the city, expands a coastal plain. into the Upper Bay, is restricted at the Narrows, The Piedmont Plateau is generally an upland, again widens out in the Lower Bay, and passes which is extensive in Virginia and Maryland, but into the Atlantic between the points of Rock- is comparatively limited in the vicinity of New away Beach and Sandy Hook. York. Occasionally its eastern margin sinks Eastward and northeastward from the main almost to tide water, as at the heads of the great channel the East River extends to Long Island estuaries, Potoniac, Chesapeake, and Delaware, Sound, and connects again with the Hudson and at New York Bay. Its western margin is River by the tidal ways of Harlem River and defined by the mountains known in Virginia as Spuyten Duyvil Creek, thus completing the the Blue Ridge, in Pennsylvania as South Moun water circuit about the Borough of Manhattan tain, and farther north as the Highlands of New of New York City. Northeast of the Borough Jersey and New York. Within the district of Manhattan the peninsula between Long Island described in this folio the Piedmont Plateau, is Sound and the Hudson is drained by the parallel confined to the region west of the Palisades and channels of Tibbit Brook, Bronx River and its the crest of Staten Island, and may be roughly tributary Sprain Brook, Hutchinson Brook, and described as a rolling lowland above which Sheldrake River. The western end of Long certain elevations, particularly the Watch ung Island is without running streams of notable Mountains, rise abruptly. The Piedmont area size, the surface waters being gathered largely west and northwest of the Paterson quadrangle in small ponds, whose irregular disposition is in is bounded definitely by the Appalachian High contrast to the parallelism of the channels north lands, here known as the Ramapo Mountains. east of the Harlem. The shores of Long Island, That part of the New York district which lies Manhattan Island, and the mainland are deeply east of the Hudson and north of the East River is indented by bays and estuaries. Some of the not strictly a part of the Coastal Plain or the Pied latter are locally called creeks or rivers, such as mont Plateau, though the distribution of relief is Newtown, Flushing, Harlem, Westchester, East in some ways parallel; it is rather the southern Chester, Pelham, and Little Neck. and southwestern extension of an upland which West of the Hudson channel, Arthur Kill and was continuous throughout the larger part of Kill van Kull isolate Staten Island from the main New England and which is connected with the land of New Jerseypand are outlets of Newark Appalachian Highlands of New "Jersey. This Bay, which is the estuary of the Hackensack and slightly rolling and yet accordant upland, as Passaic rivers. The Hackensack drains a small viewed from any of the higher points of the sur valley closely parallel to the Hudson, in Bergen face, may be seen to rise gently from sea level County, N. J., and Rockland County, N. Y. The northward, until it reaches a maximum elevation Passaic watershed is much more extensive, com within this district of over 300 feet. Below it prising the streams of a wide area in northern FIG. 1. Map showing drainage lines in the vicinity of New York City and channels in the bays. narrow valleys have been cut, such as those of the New Jersey, west to the divide of the Highlands, Depth of water shown by contour lines to depth of 10 fathoms. Bronx and Sawmill rivers. Were they filled to beyond which the waters flow to the Delaware. the level of the stronger ridges a broad, rolling The Morris Canal, connecting Jersey City and through the Upper Bay by banks on the east and mathematical plane exhibits no relief; any land plain would'be restored. There is strong evi Phillipsburg, on the Delaware, follows the Passaic west over which there are but 3 fathoms or less surface exhibits more or less as it departs more or dence that such a plain did once exist, as will Valley to the border of this district. of water. One small shoal lies in the lee of less from a plane. be described later. West of the Hudson this The depth of water in these waterways affects Governors Island, and another off Gowanus Bay, The Atlantic slope of the United States south plain is represented in the longitudinal profile their relation to commerce and determines in large but the most extensive shallows occupy the west of New York City is divided, according to relief of the Palisades and of the First Watchung degree the value of adjacent lands. The Lower ern part of trie bay. of the surface, into two physiographic provinces, Mountain. Bay is shallow between Sandy Hook and Coney East River, like the Hudson, has generally a the lower and eastern of which is known as the At sea level the slope of the plain and the slope Island, where the water over-Romer Shoal, East depth of less than 10 fathoms, but it is locally Coastal Plain, the higher and western as the of the present drainage coincide, but the plain Bank, and other banks is from 1-J- to 3 fathoms ( very deep, there being depths of 25 fathoms Piedmont Plateau. The latter extends back to rises inland until at the northern border of |;he dieep. These shoals constitute the bar, which is among the^ narrow rocky channels of Hell Gate, the Appalachian Mountains and forms their east Harlem quadrangle there is a difference in altitude crossed by the Fourteen-foot, Ambrose, Swash, wjbdch are swept by swift tidal currents.

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