Ringing Rocks

Ringing Rocks – Peculiar Ringing Properties

Ringing Rocks Park is a 128 acre park which is nestled in the woods in Upper Black Eddy wherein located in the park, one will come across field of boulders of around 7 to 8 acres in size that have an unusual property. The area is lacking of any vegetation but for some lichens that tend to grow on the rocks.

In such an area within the boundaries of Pennsylvania’s forested Bucks County seems to be an unusual place, which is a property of rocks that makes the location so strange. Stones usually do not ring but when these particular stones seem to be struck lightly with a hammer or another rock, they tend to vibrate making a sound as if they are metal and hollow and ring with a familiar sound like that of a metal pipe being struck.

Moreover,this park also tends to have Bucks’ Country biggest waterfall. Besides the peculiar ringing properties of the stones, there seems to be other mysterious adjoining the park which is that most of the boulder fields are the outcome of an avalanche from a mountainside collapse, where the boulder field is towards the top of the hill and not the bottom. This could mean that it did not result from a rock slide.

Boulders with High Content of Aluminium & Iron

There seems to be no evidence to indicate that these could be dropped there by a glacier but glaciers do not come this far to the south.

How the boulder field got there seem to be a mystery.The boulders seem to be made of substance known as diabase, which is of the same type of rock that makes up most of the earth’s crust thatis mostly volcanic basalt. This one is the largest diabase boulder fields in the Eastern United States where the boulders have a high content of aluminium and iron.

 They are presumed to have been broken apart at the time of the Pleistocene Epoch around 12,000 years back. Another amazing fact is while all the rocks tend to be made of the same material, mostly of iron and hard minerals, only one-third of them seem to produce the ringing sound when they were hit. Rocks which ring are called `live’ rocks and those which do not tend to ring are called `dead’ rocks.

Developed through years of Freeze-Thaw Cycles

The boulders were developed through several years of freeze-thaw cycles which broke the diabase into single pieces, a process which is known as `frost-wedging’. The rocks could then have been collected in one area as the water soaked soil provided lubrication for the stones to move downhill to their present location which is a process known as solifluction.

The same could have occurred prior to the ice age when overlying moist soil trickled over the frozen permafrost below taking the boulders with it.Others have more imaginary explanations like radioactivity, meteorites, comets or some strange magnetic fields could be responsible while still others have suggested supernatural possibilities and the area has been researched by those interested in the supernatural.

 Dr J.J. Ott had gathered adequate rocks in June 1890, with different pitches in order to play some tunes accompanied by the Pleasant Valley Band which took place at Stony Garden at the time of the Buckwampun meeting. It was probably the first ever rock concert that took place.