Contact Info

195 Rankin Science
572 Rivers Street
Boone, NC
28608
(828) 262-3049
FAX: (828) 262-6503

Chairperson:
Dr. Johnny A. Waters
watersja@appstate.edu

General Questions:
Geology Webmaster

Local Geology

These are some features of the geology around Boone and neighboring areas. The content on this page will be expanded periodically.

This photo of Kraut Creek was taken behind the gymnasium on the Appalachian State University campus, and shows a major nonconformity (a surface of erosion or non-deposition) at the point of the arrow. The underlying rock is the 1200 million year old Cranberry Gneiss, and the overlying sediment (which is a point bar deposit) is, at the oldest, only a few thousand years old.	Near Zionville, NC, US 421 crosses a massive debris flow that moved down the side of Rich Mountain into the adjacent valley. In a few places, the flow is well-exposed, (as in the above photo) showing not only the poorly rounded, poorly sorted (different sizes mixed together) and poorly stratified (not layered) materials of the debris flow, but the underlying Cranberry Gneiss as well. The dark band (manganese oxides and hydroxides?) that separates the debris from the Cranberry is probably a paleosol (ancient soil), representing the pre-flow land surface.	A close up of the contact between the debris flow and the Cranberry, illustrating the paleosol.
Near the center of this outcrop is a small channel, containing well-rounded, sorted and stratified rock fragments, which probably represents a stream that was buried by the flow.	A short distance from US 421 near Mountain City, TN is an exposure of the Stone Mountain Thrust fault. The fault represents the boundary between the crystalline (igneous and metamorphic) rocks of the Blue Ridge, and the sedimentary rocks of the Valley and Ridge. The view in the photo is taken lying on the footwall of the fault; the rock on the footwall to the left is the Cambrian Shady dolomite, the rock on the hanging wall to the right is the pre-Cambrian Roan Creek greenstone, which has been intruded by granitic pegmatites (pinkish colored due to the potassium feldspar).	A different view of the footwall of the Stone Mountain thrust, taken from back in the quarry.
An anticline in the Cambrian Rome formation, on US 421, Mountain City, TN.	A normal fault (hanging wall moved down, relatively) just off US 421, Mountain City, TN. The brownish rock to the left is the Cambrian Rome formation, and the whitish rock to the right is the Cambrian Erwin formation.