These cabbage-head structures, created by microscopic cyanobacteria, formerly known as “blue-green algae”,are part of the Hoyt Limestone of Late Cambrian age at which time the environment was that of a peritidal setting involving oolite shoals, lagoons, and intertidal flats. They were originally described by James Hall, he first State Paleontologist of New York, as early as 1847.  He identified them as being organic and placed stromatolites in a new genus. Paleontologist Winifred Goldring was the first to identify the creatures responsible for creating the structures found.

Glaciated surfaces expose horizontal sections of the cabbage-shaped heads composed of vertically stacked, hemispherical stromatolites.  The locality is significant in the history of geology as the area where stromatolites were first described and interpreted. Between the heads are ooids, fragments of trilobites, brachiopods, pelecypods, and quartz-sand particles.