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The Ridgeley sandstone is a sandstone or quartzite of Devonian age found in the Appalachian Mountains of Pennsylvania, Maryland, West Virginia, and Virginia, United States. The Ridgeley is fine-grained, siliceous, calcareous in its lower strata, sometimes fossiliferous, and sometimes locally pebbly or conglomeritic. Varying in thickness from 12 to 500 feet (4–150 m), this rock slowly erodes into white quartz sand that often washes or blows away, but sometimes accumulates at large outcrops. When freshly broken, the rock is white, but outcrop surfaces are often stained yellowish by iron oxides.
The Ridgeley Sandstone was described and named in 1913 from an outcrop in Ridgeley, West Virginia, across the North Branch of the Potomac River from Cumberland, Maryland. The type locality was designated at the town of Ridgely (spelling later changed to Ridgeley) in Mineral County, West Virginia. During the early 20th century, there was some dispute about relation between the Ridgeley Sandstone and the Oriskany Sandstone (named after a locality in New York) and the Monterey Sandstone (named after a locality in Virginia). This dispute was resolved by Butts (1940), who stated that the Oriskany Sandstone "corresponds exactly with the Ridgley Sandstone," that the Oriskany Sandstone is the same as the Monterey Sandstone of Virginia, and that the rules of stratigraphic nomenclature dictate that the name Oriskany Sandstone should be applied to these strata.
^ Cardwell, Dudley H., Robert B. Irwin, and Herbert P. Woodward, with cartography by Charles W. Lotz (1986). Geologic Map of West Virginia. West Virginia Geological and Economic Survey. p. 2.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
^ Tilton, John L., William F. Prouty, R.C. Tucker, and Paul H. Price (1927). Hampshire and Hardy Counties. Morgantown, West Virginia: West Virginia Geological Survey. pp. xiii + 624.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
Originally spelled "Ridgely" but changed to "Ridgeley" to conform to usage by the U.S. Postal Service.
Schuchert, C., Swartz, C.K., Maynard, T.P., and Rowe, R.B., 1913, The Lower Devonian deposits of Maryland, in: Lower Devonian - Text (C.K. Swartz, C. Schuchert, and C.S. Prosser, eds.), Maryland Geological Survey, Johns Hopkins Press, Baltimore, p. 67-132
Butts, C., 1940, Geology of the Appalachian Valley in Virginia: Virginia Geological Survey Bulletin 52, pt. 1, 568p.
Panorama of a roadcut through the Ridgeley sandstone along U.S. Route 522 north of Shirleysburg, Huntingdon County, Pennsylvania, April 2011