The Southern Massanutten Roadless Area contains about 11,800 acres in the George Washington National Forest in the Valley and Ridge physiographic province of west-central Virginia. The area, which is 13 mi long and 1 to 2 mi wide, is in Page and Rockingham Counties on the eastern side of the Shenandoah Valley, between the North and South Forks of the Shenandoah River. The north end is 11 mi southwest of Luray and the south end is 7 mi east of Harrisonburg (fig. 1). The roadless area is characterized by a series of long sandstone ridges collectively called Massanutten Mountain. Ridge crests are 1,100 to 1,900 ft above the Shenandoah Valley floor, and are composed principally of resistant Massanutten Sandstone, which is overlain by thin shales and limestones bearing iron mineralization. The Martinsburg Shale and several limestones rock units underlie the Massanutten Sandstone (Brent, 1960, pl. 1.; Allen, 1967, pl. 1). The entire sequence has been folded into a synclinorium (Brent, 1960, p. 81).
Although many of these strata have been mined in the Shenandoah Valley, production of mineral commodities from within the roadless area has been minimal (fig. 1).
