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The Official Website of the State of West Virginia

Geologic mystery in Monroe County visible only from the air

1/15/2022

Unknown to many residents of the Greenbrier Valley in southern West Virginia, a six-mile crack in the surface of the earth has been hiding beneath their feet.
Visible only from the air, the "Monitor Lineament" is one of the strangest landforms in this scenic landscape of bluegrass pastures, vanishing brooks, and healing springs.
Coursing in a straight line across northern Monroe County from near Sinks Grove to Second Creek, the lineament is seemingly impossible to perceive at eye-level.
A thoughtful observer might recognize it as an exceptionally regular row of sink-holes, each marking the location of a cavern beneath — all part of a maze of caverns that underlies the "levels" of the southern Greenbrier Valley.
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