Geologic maps of the Stephenson and Winchester quadrangles, Frederick and Clarke Counties, Virginia, and Inwood and White Hall quadrangles, Berkeley and Jefferson Counties, West Virginia

Abstract

The study area consists of four contiguous 7.5-minute quadrangles and is located in Frederick and Clarke Counties, Virginia, and Berkeley and Jefferson Counties, West Virginia. The individual quadrangles are Stephenson, Winchester, Inwood, and White Hall. The study area lies within the Great Valley subprovince of the Valley and Ridge physiographic province where about 23,000 feet (ft) (7,000 meters [m]) of Middle Cambrian to Upper Devonian sedimentary rocks are exposed and are overlain by Holocene and older surficial deposits. The area of the four maps is divided into three geologic regions based on the following primary lithologies: (1) Cambrian and Ordovician carbonate rocks of the Great Valley southeast of the North Mountain fault zone and east and west of the core of the Massanutten synclinorium; (2) shale, graywacke, and calcareous shale of the Ordovician Martinsburg Formation of the Great Valley and Massanutten synclinorium; and (3) Ordovician through Devonian clastic rocks and minor limestone and dolostone northwest of and within the North Mountain fault zone. Rocks of all three regions were folded and faulted during the late Paleozoic Alleghanian orogeny (roughly 320 to 250 million years before present). The terrain of this portion of the Great Valley generally is gently to moderately rolling with low local relief with elevations in the study area ranging from about 425 ft (130 m) where Opequon Creek flows out of the eastern edge of the Inwood quadrangle to about 950 ft (290 m) adjacent to Round Hill in the western part of the Winchester quadrangle. Sinkholes and other karst features are common in the carbonate rocks of the Great Valley. The area west of the North Mountain fault zone is underlain by middle Paleozoic strata and consists of a series of ridges and valleys with higher local relief, with elevations ranging from about 785 ft (240 m) in the vicinity of Green Spring in the central part of the White Hall quadrangle to about 1,435 ft (437 m) at the summit of North Mountain in the northeastern part of the White Hall quadrangle.