Huntingdon borough

Pulpit Rocks

Did you know the Pulpit Rocks between Huntingdon and Alexandria are a National Historic Landmark, and that what happened there was an idea?

They are weathered pillars of Oriskany sandstone sitting on layers of limestone, about fifty feet tall and set about ten feet apart, wide enough for a person to walk between. The stone was laid down roughly 390 million years ago, when this was the floor of an inland sea.

Pennsylvania set up its Geological Survey in 1836, and the Huntingdon area was one of the first places surveyed. John Frazer, one of the geologists on that team, looked at the rock here and worked out that the accepted wisdom was wrong. Everyone believed a single layer of sandstone and conglomerate ran under the ridges. Around the Pulpit Rocks it was clear there were several layers of sandstone with thick beds of other rock in between.

That one correction immediately made sense of what surveyors had been finding over in New York and Virginia. When the Survey published its first major report in 1858, a watercolor of these rocks was in it.

The site was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1993. Juniata College owns part of it, its geology department still teaches there, and a plaque marks the spot.

Nothing further from the county histories. The six histories held here end in 1913 and this story belongs to 1993, so there is no passage in them that bears on it. Rather than attach an unrelated page and let it look like corroboration, this story stands on the sources listed below.

What the fact check changed. CORRECTED, though nothing in the original was false. It was true and badly undersold, which on a history page is its own kind of failure. CONFIRMED: a geologist did realize in the 1800s that the ridges held multiple rock layers rather than one, and it did change how mountains were understood. WHAT THE POST LEFT OUT, all of it sourced and all of it better than what was there. The geologist has a name, John Frazer, and he was on the Pennsylvania Geological Survey team, the Survey having been established in 1836 with fieldwork from 1836 to 1842. The Huntingdon area was among the first surveyed. The insight immediately made sense of survey findings in New York and Virginia. The Survey's first major report in 1858 carried a watercolor of these rocks. The rocks are Oriskany sandstone on limestone, about fifty feet tall, ten feet apart, and about 390 million years old. AND THE HEADLINE THE POST MISSED ENTIRELY: the Pulpit Rocks were declared a NATIONAL HISTORIC LANDMARK in 1993. Juniata College owns part of the site and its geology department still teaches there. A county history page had a National Historic Landmark in its own back yard and ran four vague sentences about it. SOURCE LIMIT: this is a single Wikipedia article, which is a lead, not a source. It is internally consistent and the NHL designation is independently checkable through the National Park Service. Flagged for a later tick rather than left silent.

Sources

Pulpit Rocks, Wikipedia (2026)

Checked 2026-08-01 · County history, independently fact checked

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