The Kittatinny Ridge was created about four hundred million years ago when a small continent that was long and thin collided with proto North America. The strike caused folding and faulting which cause the Silurian Shawnagunk conglomerate which is made mostly of quartz, to rise out of a shallow sea. The heat from pressure caused the quartz to bend, and silica melted the quartz granules together along with other stone. Millions of years of erosion from rain, wind, snow, ice shaped the mountain and valley to its present configuration. The Wisconsin glacier which started to form around 21,000 BC and started to melt in 13,000 BC left boulder fields, end moraines and a terminal moraine which starts north of Belvidere and goes east to just south of Great Meadow and continues east to just north of Budd Lake and continues east to Denviile where it goes southeast toward Morristown and goes around the south end of Great Swamp.