Geology topics
Publications and source records attributed to Gertrude C. Gazdik.
The Ellicot Rock Wilderness comprises 3,332 acres in parts of Sumter, Nantahala and Chattahoochee National Forests. The Ellicott Rock Extension would expand wilderness boundaries in these national forests by 5,600 acres. The Ellicott Rock Extension, 5,512 acres and the Persimmon Mountain Area, 6,678 acres, are both in Sumter National Forest.
The Ellicott Rock Wilderness and additions were investigated for mineral resources by the U.S. Bureau of Mines (USBM) in the fall of 1978 and the fall of 1979; the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) mapped the geology in 1978 and 1979 (Bell and Luce, 1983) and assessed the mineral resource potential of the study area (Luce and others, 1983).
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No abstract available.
This report is part of a series that assesses the mineral potential of the Gee Creek Wilderness (fig. 1). Other reports in the series describe the geology (Epstein, 1983a), geochemistry (Epstein, 1983b), and a summary interpretive report (Epstein, Gazdik, and Behum, 1983). During the recent U.S. Bureau of Mines field investigation, 21 samples were collected (fig. 2) and were submitted to the Bureau's Reno Metallurgy Research Center, Reno, Nev., for analysis. All samples were tested for 40 elements by semiquantitative spectrographic analyses. Additional testing by atomic absorption, neutron activation, and wet chemical techniques was performed for selected elements on some samples. Two shale samples were submitted to the Bureau of Mines, Tuscaloosa Metallurgy Research Center, Tuscaloosa, Ala., for the evaluation of ceramic properties.
The Gee Creek Wilderness comprises 2,493 acres (nearly 4 square miles) in the Cherokee National Forest, Polk and Monroe Counties, Tennessee, about 4 miles (6 km) southeast of Etowah, Tenn., and about 20 miles northeast of Cleveland, Tenn. All of the surface in the wilderness is in U.S. Government ownership; mineral rights on nearly half of the land remain in private ownership. The study area is in the Blue Ridge physiographic province. The major rock types in the wilderness area consist of sandstone, shale, and conglomerate of the Chilhowee Group of Cambrian and Cambrian(?) age. Faulting appears to have controlled the location of minor subeconomic iron deposits, but no potential mineral resources were detected by the present survey. Shales, useful for brick or lightweight aggregate, and sandstone, useful for crushed stone or sand, have little economic interest because these rock types are common throughout the region and are found closer to potential markets. The possibility of natural gas occurring in untested rocks structurally beneath the Chilhowee strata cannot be discounted. No potential was found for any other mineral resource.
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No abstract available.
The james River Face Wilderness comprises 8,800 acres in the Jefferson National Forest and occupies parts of Bedford and Rockbridge Counties, west-central Virginia. It is about 2 mi southeast of Natural Bridge Station and 0.5 mi south of Glasgow (fig. 1). Access is provided by U.S. Route 501, State Route 130, and the Blue Ridge Parkway. Interior access is provided by the Appalachian Trail, other marked foot trails and a graded bridle path. The area, on the crest of the Blue Ridge Mountains, is drained by small tributaries of the James River. Altitudes range from 600 ft where U.S. Route 501 crosses the James River to 3,073 ft on Highcock Knob.
The rocks in the James River Face Wilderness are shales and quartzites that overlie a meta-igneous basement. They are folded into a large southwestward-plunging anticline that is cut off on the east and south by an extensive thrust fault that brings old basement rocks over the younger sedimentary rocks. Geochemical studies of stream sediments, soils, and rocks do not reveal any unusually high metal concentrations, but a large resource of metallurgical-grade quartzite and shale suitable for structural clay products and lightweight aggregate is in the wilderness. Antietam (Erwin) Quartzite has been quarried at three sites in the wilderness as raw material for silicon used in the manufacture of ferrosilicon. Other uses included crushed rock for concrete aggregate, road metal, and railroad ballast, and sand for cement and mortar. Potential uses include ganister for silica brick and specialty sands such as filter and furnace sand. Firing tests on samples of shale from the Harpers (Hampton) Formation show that it could be used for the manufacture of brick and as lightweight aggregate. Of marginal economic interest are heavy-mineral layers in the basal Unicoi (Weverton) Formation.
The Cohutta Wilderness and the Hemp Top Roadless Area have minor occurrences of metallic minerals, but no known resource potential for such minerals in the forseeable future, judging by available data, and only a very minor potential for stone for aggregate, road construction, and similar nondimension use. The rocks of the Ducktown massive sulfide district to the northeast do not appear to extend into the study area, and geochemical data derived from samples of rock, soil, and alluvium do not reveal any anomalously high concentrations of trace elements that could be representative of hidden mineral deposits. Sedimentary rocks underlying the metamorphic rocks exposed at the surface have an unknown potential for hydrocarbons in the form of natural gas. No reasonable estimate of the potential can be made until some test drilling is done in the area.
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The proposed Big Frog Wilderness is comprised of approximately 1820 hectares (18.2 km 2 ) of mountainous terrain in the Cherokee and Chattahoochee National Forests south of the Ocoee River in Polk County, Tennessee, and Fannin County, Georgia. Rocks of the study area are greenschist-facies metasandstone, meta-arkose, metagraywacke, and dark slate of the Ocoee Supergroup of late Precambrian age. A major thrust fault, correlated with the Greenbrier Fault, separates fine-grained slaty rocks of the Snowbird Group on the northwest side, from coarse clastic sediments and interbedded slates of the Great Smoky Group on the southeast. North- and northeast-trending folds are common in the map area. Minor deposits of Quaternary sand and gravel occur locally in the lower parts of large streams. Semiquantitative spectrographic, atomic absorption, and selected fire assay analyses were done on more than 200 samples of rock, soil, and stream sediment. No significant metal anomalies were found for 31 major, minor, and trace elements. In many places, metasiltstone and metasandstone contain trace amounts of chalcopyrite and sphalerite as microscopic intergrowths with the chief sulfide minerals, pyrite and pyrrhotite. Sulfides make up as much as 5 to 10 percent of some rocks and provide concentrations of Cu, Zn, and As slightly higher than background in samples of rock and soil. Rocks containing these disseminated base-metal sulfides are of insufficient grade to have current economic potential, however. No metallic mineral resources are known within the proposed Big Frog Wilderness. Nonmetallic resources, including slate and phyllite, stone, and sand and gravel are present locally, but are not presently a value because similar resources exist closer to markets outside the study area. These deposits therefore would have only marginal use in the region.
No abstract available.
The Craggy Mountain Wilderness Study Area covers about 550 hectares of the Pisgah National Forest in the Blue Ridge Mountains of western North Carolina (fig. 1). The area is 21 km northeast of Asheville, Buncombe County, N.C., and 11 km southwest of Mount Mitchell, the highest point in eastern North America. The study area is bounded on the southeast by the Blue Ridge Parkway, on the northeast by Bullhead Ridge, and on the southwest and west by Big Fork Ridge (Plate 1b). It includes all of the Craggy Mountain scenic area established by the Forest Service in 1961 and some additional land west of Bearwallow Branch and along the middle part of Carter Creek for a short distance beyond the mouth of Peach Orchard Creek.