Guyandot Sandstone

From West Virginia (WV) Cyclopedia

The Guyandot Sandstone varies in thickness from 50-to-100 feet in the lower New River Gorge region. The West Virginia Geological Survey (WVGS) indicated the ledge was the lower of "two pronounced cliffs" below the massive outcrop of Nuttall Sandstone on the canyon's rim. The upper cliff, though un-named by the survey, is assumed to be the outcrop of the Harvey Conglomerate Sandstone. The Guyandot bed forms the floor of New River at its junction with Gauley River and outcropped as cliffs along the grade of the Chesapeake & Ohio Railway during its construction. The railroad's Shoofly, Blue Hole, and Popenose tunnels were drive through these cliffs.

The WVGS described the Guyandot Sandstone as "more-or-less lenticular, massive to current-bedded, medium- to coarse-grained and pebbly, gray to grayish-white." Aside from its cliffs in the lower New River Gorge, the Guyandot is not "persistent" but not as prominent a cliff-maker as in Wyoming County, where the sandstone takes its name from its outcrop on the Laurel Fork of the Guyandotte River.