[3] It was discovered in 1844 by Increase A. Lapham and Fisk Day on the site of a quarry owned by the Schoonmaker family.

It is largely dolomite, a sedimentary rock of calcium magnesium carbonate (CaMg(CO3)2) that is similar to limestone.

Amateur geologists like Thomas A. Greene and Fisk Holbrook Day collected fossils from the site.

Alexander Emanuel Agassiz purchased most of Day's collection (over 4 short tons (3.6 t)) for the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University in 1881.

William C. Alden photographed the reef in 1899; the picture was widely distributed in geology textbooks.

In 1904, Amadeus William Grabau published a paper on the reef in the Geological Society of America Bulletin in 1903.

[5] The G. D. Francey Coal, Stone & Supply Company bought the land from Schoonmaker in 1909 to produce aggregate.