Appalachian Tectonics

Mountain ranges are the most conspicuous elements of the earth's architecture, and the manner in which the architectural units are arranged or disarranged has become the study of a subdivision of geology known as Tectonics. A hundred years ago James Hall attempted the first scientific synthesis of the steps in the building of the eastern North American mountains, the Appalachians. His initial hypothesis of 1857, expanded and broadened by J.D. Dana during the decade which followed, laid the found