[Journal entry for Conference House Park and Mount Loretto Unique Area, Staten Island, New York, January 29, 2025]

I needed some photographs of the terminal moraine formed during the Ice Age for my Glacial Geomorphology class at Columbia, so I visited southern Staten Island, New York, an area with several parks along the sea coast. I was pleased that the drive there from Tappan, New York via the New Jersey Turnpike, Goethels Bridge and West Shore Expressway took only about an hour. I first stopped at Conference House Park at Wards Point, where Arthur Kill joins New York Harbor, because I had found pictures on the web indicating that the moraine there was well-exposed in a sea cliff. It’s a beautiful park on the south coast, but the exposure of the moraine was very disappointing. It was much smaller than in the pictures, perhaps due to recent erosion, and the view of the cliff was mostly blocked by tall bushes. I had a pleasant walk, first along a pedestrian path through the wooded park, and then along a long section of beach. I examined several glacial boulders atop the moraine, including one gneiss boulder at the eastern end of the park covered with glacial striae. And I examined many glacial boulders and smaller stones that had washed out of the moraine onto the beach. Newark Basin shales and sandstones were the most common, but granitic and metamorphic rocks were present, too. I found one informal trail that led through the bushes to a halfway decent exposure of the moraine and was able to take a few photos. As I was leaving, and rather by impulse, I drove to Mount Loretto Unique Area, located on the shore about a mile east of Conference House Park. I had much better luck there. The section of the shore east of the Shrine of the Immaculate Virgin has tall sea cliffs that expose the moraine very well, and all the shore is littered with glacial bounders of all sizes. I spent a long time walking along the shore, assessing the diversity of the lithology of the boulders. I found several that were clearly Schunemonk Conglomerate (“puddingstone”), brought by the glaciers from a Paleozoic ridge about 50 miles north of Staten Island. I then walked along the base of the cliffs, looking carefully at their structure and taking close-up photos of moraine material. I used my compass, which measures 52 by 77 millimeters, for scale. Many other visitors were walking along the beach, some with their dogs. A group of photographers had set their cameras on tripods and were busily snapping photos in the direction of the sea. It took me a while to realize that they were photographing a seal that was sitting atop a big glacial boulder a little offshore. It was motionless and I doubt that I would have noticed it has the photographers not been there. Afterwards, I had pizza at Nonna's Pizza Tottenville (Page Avenue, Staten Island).