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Coal is an organic rock that takes millions of years to form. This process began over 300 million years ago when this area was a vast tropical swamp. As plants died in this hot, humid environment, they decomposed in swampy, stagnant water. Over several million years, climate change and continental uplift drained the basin and turned the swamps into peat bogs. As millions more years passed, layer upon layer of sediment - thousands of feet thick - covered the bogs. The immense pressure and weight from the sediment ultimately compacted the peat into coal. The rich coal seams of the New River basin were thousands of feet underground until the Teays River, the precursor of the New River, started to flow north from the Appalachians. Over one hundred million years, through ice ages and thaws, the Teays flowed through the area, channeling down through the sedimentary rock of the basin and exposing the strata of coal and other rocks that had been deposited millions of years earlier. Fossils are evidence of plants found in the coal formations throughout the gorge. Coal seams are identified by their names. During the drive today you may see coal from the Fire Creek, Sewell, or Beckley coal seams.