The first small local industries used the power of the Chuctanunda to help settlers carve farms from the primeval forest, and near this site stood the original sawmill, grist mill, and an iron forge that made wheel rims and scythes. Clearing the land also fostered new industries, as burned felled timber supplied material for making potash and fuel for burning newly accessible limestone into quicklime. Other businesses produced brooms and linseed oil by harvesting broomcorn from the river bottom lands and flax from the uplands. As the area grew, service businesses such as stage coach stops, taverns, and toll gates became important along the Mohawk Turnpike, a main route for military and commercial traffic before the canal and railroad and a path used by hundreds of thousands heading to settle Western New York and beyond. In the tropical climate of the Cambrian Age, early plant and sea life thrived here, and their remains settled on the floor of a warm, shallow sea; over time the sea mud dried and, billions of years later, became the rock layer called Chuctanunda Dolostone, similar to limestone, in which clam-like brachiopod fossils are still visible. The last Ice Age reached its maximum over Amsterdam about 21,750 years ago, and its melting carved the Chuctanunda waterfalls and the Mohawk River Valley.