ROSE HILL FORMATION

  Site Location: 

Leopards Mill Camp, mileage 129.90

         Nearest Access: Lock 53, mileage 129.96

  Here is another of the Silurian age assemblage of red siltstone (shale) and sandstone that together with the McKenzie and the Bloomsburg lends the color red to the Canal landscape from Loner Siding/Round Top to this point.  Except for the white, formidable Keefer Sandstone that interrupts the red sequence, these formations could all be described under a single formation name, their description and environment of deposition being so very similar.  At Leopards Mill Camp, the rocks are mostly shale and were drilled and blasted to create the Canal berm.  In some places, for example, across the river at Sir John’s Run, the base of the Rose Hill is defined by an iron ore deposit of bedded hematite.  It is often defined separately as the Clinton Iron Ore Formation that stretches from Clinton, NY, all the way south to the vicinity of Birmingham, AL.  On the western outskirts of Cumberland, MD, the Rose Hill/Clinton was a very important ore deposit.  Iron furnaces and iron foundaries were established to manufacture iron products that were dependent on those deposits.