Webster County Tourism

An unnamed Middle Pennsylvanian sandstone assigned to the economically-important coal-bearing Kanawha Formation. These deposits were deposited on a low-lying coastal plain around 313 million years ago. The sandstone that forms Hanging Rocks was deposited in an ancient river. The undulating lower surface of the sandstone resulted when the river eroded into underlying maring sediments containing fossil shells and traces of fossil tree trunks on the undersurface of the overhang deposited in a prehistoric logjam.