Sparkling beaches, tidal estuaries, and granite headlands ornament the Massachusetts coast, while giant folds of gneiss and schist crisscross the interior, squeezed up between colliding continents like toothpaste from a tube. James Skehan explains the geologic history behind the rocks and landforms visible from the state's highways, including such well-known historic features as Bloody Bluff, Beacon Hill, Plymouth Rock, and Walden Pond. Interspersed through the guidebook are tales of pioneering geologists such as Harvard's Louis Agassiz, the first to propose that continental glaciers--not the remnants of Noah's Flood as early settlers had imagined--polished the state's bedrock and deposited its enormous boulders and sand plains. Numerous maps and photographs reveal ancient volcanoes, marble potholes, colorful minerals, dinosaur footprints, and America's first commercial railroad--built with blocks of Quincy granite. Geologic roadguides include tours of Boston Harbor Islands National Recreation Area, Cape Cod National Seashore, Nantucket, Martha's Vineyard, and Mount Greylock State Reservation....

The small chunk of North America enclosed within the state boundaries of Connecticut and Rhode Island includes parts of at least six former continents, microcontinents, and volcanic island chains, each with its own geologic history. Roadside Geology of Connecticut and Rhode Island introduces readers to the sequence of mountain-building collisions that welded the pieces of land together and to the subsequent upwelling of magma that nearly broke them apart again. Twenty road
guides, complete with maps, photographs, and diagrams, locate
and interpret the rocks and landforms visible from the state s
highways and at nearby parks and historic sites. Readers will discover stretched pebbles at Purgatory Chasm, folded marble
at Kent Falls State Park, Eubrontes footprints at Dinosaur State Park, and glacial moraines protruding from the waters of Long Island and Block Island Sounds....