GEOLOGICAL SURVEY PROFESSIONAL PAPER

Prepared in cooperation with the 

Kentucky Geological Survey

Sandstone Units of the Lee Formation 

and Related Strata in Eastern Kentucky

By CHARLES L. RICE

With a section on

Lee and Breathitt Formations along the 

northwestern part of the eastern Kentucky coal field

By CHARLES L. RICE and GORDON W. WEIR 

CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE GEOLOGY OF KENTUCKY

GEOLOGICAL SURVEY PROFESSIONAL PAPER 1 1 51-G

Prepared in cooperation with the 

Kentucky Geological Survey

Descriptions of the Lee Formation with a 

discussion of related stratigraphic units and 

the paleogeography of eastern Kentucky and 

adjoining areas of Early and Middle 

Pennsylvanian Ages

UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE, WASHINGTON : 1984
UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR 

WILLIAM P. CLARK, Secretary

GEOLOGICAL SURVEY 

Dallas L. Peck, Director

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Rice, Charles L.

Sandstone units of the Lee formation and related strata in eastern Kentucky.

(Geological Survey professional paper ; 1151 - G)

Bibliography: p.

Supt. of Docs, no.: 119.16:1151 - G

1. Sandstone Kentucky. 2. Geology, Stratigraphic Pennsylvanian.

I. Kentucky Geological Survey.

II. Title. III. Series. 

QE471.15.S25R53 1983 552'.5 82-600381

For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office

Washington, D.C. 20402
CONTENTS

Page

Abstract ____________________________________ Gl

Introduction __________________________________ 2

Purpose and scope of study ____________________ 2

Previous work _____________________________ 3

Geographic setting __________________________ 3

Acknowledgments ---.-.____-________________ 8

Geologic setting ____________________________ 8

Lower boundary of the Pennsylvanian System ________ 11

General Outline of the Pennsylvanian System in eastern

Kentucky __________________________________ 16

Pennington and Lee Formations in the area of the Cumberland

overthrust sheet _____________________________ 18

Pennington Formation ________________________ 18

Lee Formation _____________________________ 18

Pinnacle Overlook Member __________________ 18

Chadwell Member --_._--.____-___________ 20

White Rocks Sandstone Member ______________ 21

Dark Ridge Member ______________________ 21

Middlesboro Member ______________________ 21

Page

Pennington and Lee Formations in the area of the Cumberland 

overthrust sheet Continued 

Lee Formation Continued

Hensley Member ______-_______--.-----_. G23

Bee Rock Sandstone and Naese Sandstone Members . 25 

Lee and Breathitt Formations along the northwestern part of the 

eastern Kentucky coal field by C. L. Rice and G. W. Weir _ 27 

Livingston Conglomerate Member of the Lee Formation and 

the related sandstone units _____--__--__--_-__ 29

Rockcastle Conglomerate Member of the Lee Formation _ 32 

Unnamed quartzose sandstone units below the Corbin

Sandstone Member along the Pottsville Escarpment _ _ 33 

Corbin Sandstone Member of the Lee Formation ______ 34

Grayson sandstone bed of Whittington and Ferm _____ 37

Environment of deposition of sandstone units in the Lee 

Formation _______________-___-___-__-__-._. 39

Paleogeography ______________________-__-.---. 41

Problems related to the Lee Formation deserving further study _ 49 

References cited _______--__-_----------.----_-- 50

ILLUSTRATIONS

FIGURE 1. Quadrangle index _________________________________________.---------_---_- G4

2. Physiographic diagram of Kentucky __________________________-___-__--_.-_-----------------_- 9

3. Geographic Setting of Eastern Kentucky _______________________________--_-_-_--_--_-----_----- 10

4. Geologic map of the sub-Pennsylvanian surface ________________________-__--__--_.--_------------- 12

5. Generalized section showing remnant northwest-facing cuestas ___-____-__-_--___-__------------------_ 13

6. Contour map of the base of the Pennsylvanian System ______________________-___--_-_------------_- 15

7. Geologic map of the Pennsylvanian formations of eastern Kentucky __________-___-__--_----_-----_-----_ 17

8. Correlation chart of the Pennington, Lee, and Hance Formations in the Cumberland overthrust sheet ____--_-..-_- 19

9. View of Pinnacle Overlook Member of the Lee Formation ____________________-__-._._--_--_- 20

10. Ripple bedding in upper part of the Pinnacle Overlook Member _______-___--_--__--_--__--__--_--_---- 20

11. Map showing the distribution of the Dark Ridge Member of the Lee Formation ____________________________ 22

12. View of dipping strata of the Middlesboro Member of the Lee Formation _______________-___-____-------._ 23

13. Map showing thickness contours of the Middlesboro Member of the Lee Formation __________________________ 24

14. Basal conglomeratic beds of the Middlesboro Member of the Lee Formation. ________________.___--__---___ 25

15. View of Hanging Rock on U.S. Highway 421 near Harlan, Ky ____________________--_--__--------_--_- 25

16. Map showing the thickness contours for the Bee Rock and Naese Sandstone Members ______-__-_-_--_--_---__ 26

17. Map showing the distribution of the Livingston and Rockcastle Conglomerate and Corbin Sandstone Members ________ 28

18. Schematic cross section showing relations of major members of the Lee Formation _____________-__---_.-.--- 29

19. Outlier of the Pottsville Escarpment showing the Livingston Conglomerate Member of the Lee Formation ______.-_. 30

20. Maps showing the Livingston channel and thickness of the Livingston Conglomerate Member ___________.__---_. 31

21. Planar sets of beds in the Livingston Conglomerate Member showing stringers and lenses of pebbles along bedding planes _ 32

22. View of the edge of a sandstone- and conglomerate-filled channel cut into Newman Limestone _-____-____-_--.--. 33

23. Massive quartz-pebble conglomerate on Pilot Knob ____________________-__--__---_--_-------_------ 34

24. Crossbedded conglomerate and conglomeratic sandstone on Pilot Knob _____--__--__-_----_--_-------_--_ 35

25. Cross sections showing relations of sandstone units on west edge of the Cumberland Plateau _-___-._-----__-.-- 36

26. Cliffs developed in the Corbin Sandstone Member of the Lee Formation ______________--___--.--_--__-___ 37

27. Map showing thickness contours of the Corbin Sandstone Member ___________________-__---_-_--__--.-_ 38

m
IV CONTENTS

28. Dip-directions of crossbeds in the Corbin Sandstone Member ........_....____...__.__...__-.__------- G40

29. Trough sets of crossbeds in the Corbin Sandstone Member of the Lee Formation .__..._......_..___.____-.. 41

30. Map showing outcrop of Pennsylvanian rocks and limits of Mississippian carbonate formations .....__..__.____... 42

31. Map showing locations of Pennsylvanian channels in areas other than eastern Kentucky .__.__._.........___... 43

32. Map of pre-Pennsylvanian streams and rivers ___----------..------------------------------------ 44

33. Map showing breaching of drainage divide in Early Pennsylvanian time _---.----------------------------- 45

34. Map showing major stream captures _________________------.---------------------------------- 46

35. Map showing westward migration of distributaries in Early Pennsylvanian time .......---_--------...------ 47

36. Map showing the configuration of the Sharon drainage system in early Middle Pennsylvanian time ......__.____... 48

TABLE

Page

TABLE 1. List of U.S. Geological Survey Geologic Quadrangle (GQ) maps for eastern Kentucky .........._----_...---.-. G5
CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE GEOLOGY OF KENTUCKY

SANDSTONE UNITS OF THE LEE FORMATION 

AND RELATED STRATA IN EASTERN KENTUCKY

By CHARLES L. RICE

ABSTRACT

Most of the Cumberland Plateau region of southeastern Kentucky 

is underlain by thick sequences of quartzose sandstone which are assigned for the most part to the Lee Formation. Much new information has been gathered about the Lee and related strata as a result 

of the cooperative mapping program of the U.S. Geological Survey 

and the Kentucky Geological Survey between 1960 and 1978. This report summarizes the age, lithology, distribution, sedimentary structures, and stratigraphic relations of the sandstone units of the Lee 

within and between each of three major outcrop belts in Kentucky: 

Cumberland Mountain, Pine Mountain, and the Pottsville Escarpment area.

The Lee Formation generally has been regarded as Early Pennsylvanian in age and separated from Mississippian strata in Kentucky by 

an unconformity. However, lithostratigraphic units included in the 

formation as presently defined are broadly time-transgressive and 

range in age from Late Mississippian in parts of the Cumberland 

Mountain outcrop belt to Middle Pennsylvanian in the Pottsville Escarpment area. Members of the Lee intertongue with and grade into 

the underlying Pennington Formation and overlying Breathitt Formation. Sandstone and conglomeratic sandstone members of the Lee 

of Mississippian age found only in parts of the Cumberland overthrust 

sheet are closely associated with marine rocks; Pennsylvanian members are mostly associated with continental coal-bearing strata.

Sandstone members of the Lee are mostly quartz rich and range 

from more than 90 percent to more than 99 percent quartz. They are 

relatively coarse grained, commonly pebbly, and in places conglomeratic. The units are southwest-trending linear or broadly lobate 

bodies.

The Lee Formation is as much as 1,500 ft thick in the type area in 

Cumberland Mountain where it has been divided into eight members. 

The Pinnacle Overlook, Chad well, White Rocks Sandstone, Middlesboro, Bee Rock Sandstone, and Naese Sandstone Members are 

mostly quartzose sandstone and conglomerate. The Dark Ridge and 

Hensley Members are mostly shale, siltstone, thin-bedded silty 

sandstone, and coal. The lower three of these members, the Pinnacle 

Overlook, Chadwell, and White Rocks Sandstone, are assigned to the 

Upper Mississippian Series because they intertongue with marine 

reddish or greenish shale and siltstone of the Pennington Formation 

or equivalent strata that contain a Late Mississippian fauna. The 

overlying quartzose sandstone members of the Lee commonly have 

coalified plant remains and impressions of plants and are Early to 

Middle Pennsylvanian in age; they are generally associated with terrestrial shale and siltstone containing coal beds and pinch out eastward into subgraywacke, siltstone, and shale. Although marine members commonly are bimodal, resultant transport directions for both 

marine and terrestrial members are southwesterly as determined by 

crossbedding.

Thickness variations of the Middlesboro Member in the Cumberland overthrust sheet suggest that it represents fills of at least three 

major southwesterly trending paleovalleys. Thickness variations of 

the Bee Rock Sandstone Member east of Rocky Face fault and the 

combined Bee Rock and Naese Sandstone Members west of Rocky 

Face fault suggest that these members represent fills of at least two 

major southwesterly trending paleovalleys. East of Rocky Face fault, 

the Bee Rock is generally the uppermost member of the Lee; west 

of the fault, the overlying Naese is at the top. The Naese may range 

in age from Early to Middle Pennsylvanian and is partly or wholly 

equivalent to the Rockcastle Sandstone member of the Lee Formation in the area of the Pottsville Escarpment. The MississippianPennsylvanian systemic boundary in the area of the Cumberland 

overthrust sheet in most places has been placed at an unconformity 

at the base of the Middlesboro Member; locally it is projected at the 

base of shales of the underlying Dark Ridge Member or equivalent 

strata in the Pennington Formation.

West of the Cumberland overthrust sheet, the Lee Formation in 

the Pottsville Escarpment area formerly included all Pennsylvanian 

strata below the top of the Corbin Sandstone Member. Those strata 

included, in addition to quartzose sandstone units, carbonaceous shale 

and siltstone, subgraywacke, and coal beds. Because detailed mapping demonstrated that none of the sandstone units extended through 

the outcrop area of the escarpment, the Lee was subsequently limited 

to several thick and persistent quartzose sandstone units: the 

Livingston Conglomerate Member, the Rockcastle Conglomerate 

Member, the Corbin Sandstone Member, and the Grayson sandstone 

bed of Whittington and Ferm (1967). All other intervening and overlying Pennsylvanian strata in the escarpment area are now assigned 

to the Breathitt Formation.

The Livingston Conglomerate Member, up to 120 ft thick, occupies 

a paleovalley about 200 ft deep, about 4 mi wide and 20 mi long that 

was eroded into Mississippian carbonate rocks and shale. The 

Livingston paleovalley is the largest of four paleovalleys that contain 

lenses of quartzose sandstone and conglomeratic sandstone. The four 

channels cross the sub-Pennsylvanian outcrop belt and extend southward to southeastward from the Jessamine Dome of the Cincinnati 

Arch toward the Appalachian basin. Crossbed dip-directions in the 

sandstone beds of the channels indicate transport into the Appalachian basin. A sandstone and conglomerate deposit with southwesterly 

crossbed dip-directions is preserved in an outlier of the Pottsville Escarpment at Pilot Knob, Powell County, 150 to 200 ft stratigraphically below adjacent southeasterly trending channels.

Gl
G2 CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE GEOLOGY OF KENTUCKY

The Rockcastle Conglomerate Member is a quartzose pebbly 

sandstone with lenses of pebble conglomerate near the base. It is in 

places more than 200 ft thick and it crops out in a 10- to 20-mi-wide 

southwest trending belt that parallels the dominant southwesterly 

current direction indicated by crossbeds. This member tongues to the 

northwest and pinches out into siltstone and shale, or grades northwestward into very fine-grained ripplebedded sandstone. The southeastern margin of the Rockcastle is not exposed. At its northwestern 

edge, the Rockcastle is about 150 ft above the Livingston in the subsurface.

The Corbin Sandstone Member is a quartzose sandstone that contains pebbles and lenses of pebbles. It is largely confined to a 10- to 

20-mi-wide belt along the Pottsville Escarpment and is locally as 

much as 250 ft thick. The member pinches out to the northwest in 

northeastern Kentucky and to the southeast in the central and southern parts of the outcrop belt. Deeply scoured channels at the base of 

the Corbin trend subparallel to the westerly or southwesterly current 

directions indicated by the dip directions of crossbeds. Where outcropping, the Corbin lies about 200 to more than 300 ft above the 

Rockcastle. At the Tennessee border, the Corbin is stratigraphically 

as much as 700 ft above the eroded top of Mississippian rocks. 

Pennsylvanian strata beneath the Corbin thin and wedge out to the 

northeast, so that in the northern part of the outcrop belt, the Corbin 

is the basal Pennsylvanian unit, locally filling channels cut in the 

Newman Limestone (Mississippian).

The Grayson sandstone bed of Whittington and Ferm (1967) crops 

out at the northernmost end of the Lee outcrop belt in northern Kentucky. It is mostly a thin ganisterh'ke sandstone bed underlying the 

Bruin coal bed. Locally, it is as much as 70 ft thick and appears to 

have been deposited in a southwesterly trending channel about 4 mi 

wide that locally has been eroded into Mississippian strata. Where 

the Grayson overlies the Corbin Member, it is a few feet to as much 

as 80 ft above the Corbin.

In late Mississippian time, uplift in the northern part of the central 

Appalachian orogenic belt exposed deposits of quartzose sandstone 

and conglomerate to erosion. Coarse elastics from these deposits were 

transported west and southwest into shallow marine environments 

where they were reworked by waves and marine currents and were 

deposited as the Pinnacle Overlook, Chadwell, and White Rocks 

Sandstone Members of the Lee Formation. As uplift continued into 

Early Pennsylvanian time, a large area in North America gradually 

emerged and widespread erosion occurred. Some of this erosion surface has been preserved beneath the overlying Pennsylvanian strata 

in the eastern part of the United States. The outcrop patterns of Mississippian strata and scanty subsurface data support the following 

hypothesis: The Appalachian and Eastern Interior basins were separated by a drainage divide that in part coincided with a low northwest-facing cuesta cut in carbonate rocks and extended from western 

Pennsylvania into central Kentucky. A river system on the northwest 

side of the cuesta flowed southwestwardly from northern Ohio and 

Pennsylvania into the Eastern Interior basin in western Kentucky. 

This river system, herein named Sharon-Brownsville, can be partly 

reconstructed from Pennsylvanian age channels, channel deposits, 

and lag deposits.

Early Pennsylvanian uplift to the north and northeast of Kentucky 

caused an increased volume of sediments, channel cutting, filling of 

channels, and floods, which, in the Sharon-Brownsville paleovalley, 

breached to the south and southeast gaps in the Mississippian carbonate cuesta and deepened some valleys by streams that flowed into 

the Appalachian basin. Eventually major stream captures diverted all 

the upper part of the Sharon-Brownsville drainage system into the 

Appalachian basin and into southwest flowing rivers. The major river 

channels in southeastern Kentucky gradually filled with coarse elastics from northern and northeastern sources. Braided distributaries 

also spread sediment across most of southeastern Kentucky that resulted in the deposition of the Middlesboro, Bee Rock Sandstone,

Naese Sandstone, and Rockcastle Conglomerate Members of the Lee 

Formation. At the same time, detritus from fine-grained metamorphic rocks exposed in the central Appalachians east of Kentucky was 

carried increasingly farther west and northwest. By the end of Early 

Pennsylvanian time, most of the central Appalachian basin was dominated by a delta or a series of coalescing deltas that extended westward and northwestward from the central Appalachians, and coarse 

elastics from the northern part of the Sharon River were diverted 

southwestward along valleys paralleling the Irvine-Paint Creek and 

Kentucky River fault zones in Kentucky. Continued uplift in the Sharon source area and subsidence in the Appalachian basin resulted in 

deposition of the Corbin Sandstone Member. At this time a large 

delta plain extended westward across all of eastern Kentucky from 

the central Appalachians and buried the last remnants of the Mississippian carbonate cuesta in Middle Pennsylvanian time. Continued 

subsidence led to the spread of marine water from the southwest 

across much of eastern Kentucky and deposition of a thin marine 

shale. A brief renewal of the Sharon drainage at a later time resulted 

in deposition of the Grayson sandstone bed of Whittington and Ferm 

(1967) at the northeasternmost end of the Lee outcrop belt in northeastern Kentucky.

INTRODUCTION

PURPOSE AND SCOPE OF STUDY

Most of the Cumberland Plateau region (see fig. 2) of 

southeastern Kentucky is underlain by thick sequences 

of quartzose sandstone which are time-transgressive 

and range in age from Late Mississippian to Middle 

Pennsylvanian. These sandstone units, some of which 

may be more than 250 ft thick, are largely assigned to 

the Lee Formation. A few quartzose sandstone units 

have been assigned to the underlying Pennington Formation and to the overlying Breathitt Formation, both 

of which intertongue with the Lee. An early unit is the 

Carter Caves Sandstone of Late Mississippian age. 

Geologic mapping of eastern Kentucky at a scale of 

1:24,000 was conducted by the U.S. Geological Survey 

in cooperation with the Kentucky Geological Survey 

and has revealed much new information concerning 

these sandstone units. The geologic mapping was completed in 1978 and was simultaneously in progress 

throughout eastern Kentucky from as many as eight 

field offices. Because of regional stratigraphic and 

fades variations, a single stratigraphic framework 

could not be applied everywhere. Also, changing concepts concerning Pennsylvanian stratigraphy resulted 

in nomenclatural changes and reinterpretation of older 

data during the project. The objective of this report is 

to summarize the available data for the members of the 

Lee Formation and related strata and to describe (1) 

the lithology, (2) distribution, (3) sedimentary structures, and (4) the stratigraphic relations of the units 

within and between each of the three major outcrop 

belts of the Lee: Cumberland Mountain, Pine Mountain, 

and the Pottsville Escarpment area. Although this report is primarily concerned with rocks of Pennsylvanian 

age, as indicated above, quartzose sandstone units simi-
SANDSTONE UNITS IN EASTERN KENTUCKY G3

lar to the Lee (some of which are called Lee) occur in 

the Upper Mississippian. Indeed, recent investigations 

suggest that some members of the Lee that have traditionally been assigned to the Lower Pennsylvanian are 

probably Upper Mississippian in age. All Mississippian 

sandstone units are associated with marine rocks and 

should be studied in the context of the strata that enclose them. A detailed study of Upper Mississippian 

rocks is beyond the scope of this report; however, those 

Mississippian units that have been termed Lee or are 

otherwise related to the Lee will be described in appropriate detail.

A fifth objective of this report is to discuss the depositional environments of the sandstone units. Some 

geologists h&ve suggested, particularly in recent years, 

that the sandstone units were deposited in near-shore 

marine environments and represent beach or barrierbar deposits because of their mineralogical and textural 

maturity. This report proposes a fluvial model for parts 

of the central Appalachian and Eastern Interior basins 

to account for deposition of the quartzose sandstone 

units of Early and Middle Pennsylvanian age.

The report is based primarily on 222 U.S. Geological 

Survey Geologic Quadrangle Map (GQ Map) reports, 

which cover all or parts of 246 quadrangles, that were 

published from 1961 to the end of the project. Figure 

1 is an index map showing the maps covered by the report. All of the quadrangles contain Lee rocks or equivalent strata; in most, these rocks are at the surface. 

The report also uses unpublished data from the field 

notes of more than 120 geologists (see table 1) who 

mapped the area. Some data, particularly concerning 

the sedimentology and petrology of the sandstone units, 

are from published geologic reports other than the 

maps and from many unpublished theses.

Terms used in the text to describe sandstones are

Quartzose sandstone—Sandstone composed of more 

than 90 percent quartz, commonly about 95 percent. 

The sandstone contains little or no silt- or clay-size matrix. The terms quartz arenite, orthoquartzite, "clean" 

sandstone, and Lee-type sandstone are used to describe 

the same rocks.

Subgraywacke—Sandstone composed of about 65 percent quartz, minor amounts of feldspar, mica, rock fragments, and dark minerals, and about 10 percent silt- or 

clay-size matrix. The adjective "dirty" has commonly 

been used to describe this type of sandstone.

PREVIOUS WORK

Strata of the Pennington and Lee Formations in Kentucky were first investigated by Campbell (1893). He 

named both formations from areas in Virginia near the 

Kentucky border. Subsequently, Campbell (1898 a, b) 

described the Pennington and Lee near the Pottsville

Escarpment in south-central Kentucky and named and 

mapped several members of the Lee. In these latter reports, Campbell introduced the name Breathitt Formation for strata overlying the Lee. In their investigations 

of the Cumberland Gap coal field in southeastern Kentucky, Ashley and Glenn (1906) named the Naese 

Sandstone Member of the Lee Formation and divided 

the overlying strata into five formations which were 

later included in the Breathitt Group by Englund and 

others (1963, p. 15). A. M. Miller (1910) studied the coal 

beds in areas along the Pottsville Escarpment and described numerous sections including Mississippian rocks 

and the overlying Lee and Breathitt strata. Equivalent 

Pennsylvanian strata were described by Phalen (1912) 

in northeastern Kentucky.

Englund and Smith (1960) and Englund and De 

Laney (1966) described the intertonguing relations of 

the Pennington and Lee Formations in southwestern 

Virginia. M. S. Miller (1974) studied those rocks in the 

subsurface of southwestern Virginia and adjacent parts 

of Kentucky. Englund and Windolph (1971) mapped and 

described a "Lee-type" sandstone (Carter Caves 

Sandstone) in the Upper Mississippian rocks of northeastern Kentucky. Rice and Haney (1980) summarized 

data and ideas concerning the nature of the Mississippian-Pennsylvanian systemic boundary along the 

Pottsville Escarpment in Kentucky.

Regional and interregional studies of Pennsylvanian 

rocks by Wanless (1939, 1946, and 1975a) included 

many descriptions of measured sections from Kentucky. 

In investigations of sources of basal Pennsylvanian sediments in the Eastern Interior basin, Potter and Siever 

(1956 a, b) and Siever and Potter (1956) discussed the 

petrology, trace minerals, and current directions of 

sedimentary structures of the basal Pennsylvanian 

sandstone units in the Appalachian basin. General summaries of the stratigraphy of Mississippian and 

Pennsylvanian rocks for Kentucky were made by Rice 

and others (1979) and for Virginia by Englund (1979).

GEOGRAPHIC SETTING

The Pennsylvanian rocks of eastern Kentucky crop 

out and underlie an area of about 10,500 mi2 a part of 

the Appalachian Plateau here called the Cumberland 

Plateau (fig. 2). The Cumberland Plateau is an intricately dissected upland of sharp ridges and V-shaped 

valleys. The area is borderd on the west by the 

Pottsville Escarpment which is made up of a series of 

hills capped by cliffs of resistant Pennsylvanian 

sandstone. The escarpment is as much as 700 ft high at 

the southern border of the State, but relief diminishes 

northeastward. Sandstone of the Lee Formation of 

Pennsylvanian age is overlain by less resistant shale 

and locally forms broad uplands of low relief along the
G4 CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE GEOLOGY OF KENTUCKY

INDIANA

OHIO

**>

KENTUCKY

WEST VIRGINIA

VIRGINIA

Quadrangles combined as one 

map are indicated by "Z"

TENNESSEE

FIGURE 1. Index of U.S. Geological Survey TV^-min. quadrangle maps of area in eastern Kentucky underlain by Pennsylvanian strata.

County names are shown in figure 3.

west-central and southwest border of the plateau. The 

area is bordered on the southeast by two east-northeast-trending ridges, Pine and Cumberland Mountains, 

whose crests are underlain by dipping sandstone beds 

of Late Mississippian or Early Pennsylvanian age. The 

highest mountains in Kentucky are between Pine and

Cumberland Mountains near Cumberland, Ky. (see fig. 

3). The area extends southward into Tennessee and 

northeastward into Ohio and West Virginia.

Five rivers tributary to the Ohio River drain the 

area; these are the Cumberland, Kentucky, Licking, 

and the Big and Little Sandy Rivers. Three of these
SANDSTONE UNITS IN EASTERN KENTUCKY G5

TABLE 1. — List of U.S. Geologic Survey Geologic Quadrangle (GQ) 

Maps for Eastern Kentucky. Location of maps shown in figure 1.

[All GQ's are at the scale of 1:24,000]

GQ Date of 

Quadrangle Number Publication

Adams, Ky ——————— 1489 1978

Albany, Ky —————— 550 1966

Alcorn, Ky —————— 963 1972

Ano, Ky ————————— 171 1962 

Appalachia (Kentucky 

part combined 

with Benham) ———— 1059 1973

Argillite, Ky ———— 175 1962

Artemus, Ky —————— 1207 1974 

Ashland, Ky-Ohio 

(includes Kentucky 

part of 

Catlettsburg) ——— 196 1963

Ault, Ky ———————— 1066 1973 

Balkan, Ky —————— 1127 1973

Bangor, Ky —————— 947 1971

Barbourville, Ky —— 1254 1975 

Barcreek, Ky ————— 1485 1978 

Barthell, Ky. 

(includes Kentucky 

part of Oneida 

North) ————————— 314 1964

Barthell SW 

(Kentucky part 

combined with

Bell Farm) —————— 1496 1978 

Beattyville, Ky ——— 1483 1978

Belfry, Ky —————— 1369 1977

Bell Farm, Ky. 

(includes Kentucky 

part of 

Barthell SW) ———— 1496 1978

Benham, Ky. 

(includes Kentucky 

part of

Appalachia) ————— 1059 1973

Berea, Ky ——————— 649 1967 

Bernstadt, Ky ———— 202 1963

Beverly, Ky —————— 1310 1976 

Big Creek, Ky ———— 1477 1978

Bighill, Ky —————— 900 1971

Billows, Ky —————— 228 1963

B lackey, Ky —————— 1322 1976 

Blackwater, Ky ——— 304 1964

Blaine, Ky —————— 1507 1978

Bledsoe, Ky —————— 889 1971

Bobtown, Ky —————— 1102 1973

Boltsfork, Ky. 

(includes Kentucky 

part of

Burnaugh) —————— 316 1964 

Booneville, Ky ——— 1479 1978 

Broad Bottom, Ky —— 442 1965 

Brodhead, Ky ————— 662 1967 

Bruin, Ky ——————— 522 1966

n-.ioV..,.-!- V,. ———— .__ •»•>/. tO£A

Author

Ward, D. E. 

Lewis, R. Q., Sr., 

and Thaden, R. E. 

Rice, C. L. 

Stager, H. K.

Froelich, A. J., 

and Stone, B. D. 

Sheppard, R. A., 

and Perm, J. C. 

Rice, D. D.

Sharps, J. A., 

and Perm, J. C. 

Englund, K. J. 

Froelich, A. J., 

and 

Tazelaar, J. F. 

Hylbert, D. K., 

and 

Philley, J. C. 

Newell, W. L. 

Taylor, R. A.

Pomerene, J. B.

Smith, J. H. 

Weir, G. W. 

Rice, C. L. , 

Ping, R. G., 

and Barr, J. S.

Smith, J. H.

Froelich, A. J. , 

and Stone, B. D. 

Weir, G. W. 

Hatch, N. L. , Jr. 

Weis, P. L., 

and Rice. C. L. 

Lewis, R. Q., Sr., 

and Hansen, D. E. 

Weir, G. W., 

Lee, K. Y. , and 

Cassity, P. E. 

Hatch, N. L., Jr. 

Waldrop, H. W. 

Stager, H. K. 

Pillnore, C. L. , 

and Connor, C. W. 

Csejtey, Bela, Jr. 

Lewis, R. Q. , Sr., 

Taylor, A. R., 

and Weir, G. W.

Spencer, F. D. 

Weir, G. W. 

Alvord, D. C. 

Gualtieri, J. L. 

Englund, K. J. , 

and DeLaney, A. 0.

TABLE 1. — List of U.S. Geologic Survey Geologic Quadrangle (GQ) 

Maps for Eastern Kentucky. Location of maps shown in figure 1. 

Continued

GQ Date of 

Quadrangle Number Publi- Author 

cation

Burnaugh (Kentucky 

part combined 

with Boltsfork) —— 316 1964

Burnside, Ky ————— 1253 1975

Cannel City, Ky ——— 1498 1978

Canoe, Ky ——————— 1497 1978

Carrie, Ky —————— 422 1965 

Catlettsburg 

(Kentucky part 

combined with 

Ashland) ——————— 196 1963

Clay City, Ky ———— 663 1967 

Clintwood (Kentucky 

part combined 

with Hellier ———— 950 1971

Cobhill, Ky —————— 1347 1976 

Coopersville, Ky —— 1315 1976

Corbin, Ky —————— 231 1963 

Cowcreek, Ky ————— 1448 1978

Cranston, Ky ————— 1212 1975

Creekville, Ky ——— 1464 1978 

Cumberland City, 

Ky ——————————— 475 1965

Cumberland Falls,

Ky ———————————— 274 1963

David, Ky ——————— 720 1968 

Delbarton (Kentucky 

part combined with 

Kentucky part of 

Naugatuck) —————— 879 • 1971

Dingus, Ky —————— 1463 1978 

Dorton, Ky —————— 713 1968

Dykes, Ky ——————— 1197 1974 

Eagan (Kentucky 

part combined 

with Frakes) ———— 1249 1975 

Elkhorn City, Ky.-Va. 

(includes Kentucky 

part of Harman) —— 951 1972

Evarts, Ky.-Va. 

(includes Kentucky 

part of Hubbard

Springs) ——————— 914 1974

Ewing, Ky.-Vs. ——— 172 1961

Ezel, Ky ———————— 721 1968

Fallsburg, Ky. 

(includes Kentucky 

part of 

Prichard) —————— 584 1967

Flat Gap (Kentucky 

part combined with

Whitesburg) ————— 1119 1973

Danilchik, Walter, 

and 

Lewis, R. Q. , Sr.

Spencer, F. D. 

Taylor, A. R., 

Lewis, R. Q. , Sr. 

and Smith, J. H. 

Coskren, T. D., 

and Hoge, H. P. 

Sable, E. G. 

Hinrichs, E. N. 

Seiders, V. M.

Sharps, J. A., 

and Perm, J. C. 

Simmons, G. C.

Alvord, D. C. 

Haney, D. C. 

Lewis, R. Q.> Sr., 

and Taylor, A. R. 

Puffett, W. P. 

Outerbridge, W. F. 

Philley, J. C., 

Hylbert, D. K., 

and Hoge, H. P. 

Bryant, Bruce

Lewis, R. Q. , Sr., 

and Thaden, R. E.

Smith, J. H. 

Ping, R. G. 

Outerbridge, W. F.

Alvord, D. C. 

Outerbridge, W. F. 

Barr, J. L. , 

and Arndt, H. H.

Smith, J. H. 

Newell, W. L.

Alvord, D. C., 

and Miller, R. L.

Tazelaar, J. F., 

and Newell, W. L. 

Englund, K. J., 

Smith, H. L. , 

Harris, L. D., and 

Stephens, J. G. 

Pipiringos, G. N., 

Bergman, S. C., 

and Trent, V. A.

Sharps, J. A.

Rice, C. L. , 

and Wolcott. D. E.
G6 CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE GEOLOGY OF KENTUCKY

TABLE l.—List of U.S. Geologic Survey Geologic Quadrangle (GQ) 

Maps for Eastern Kentucky. Location of maps shown in figure 1. — 

Continued

GQ 

Quadrangle Number

*Fork Ridge (Kentucky 

part combined with

Kay jay ) ———————— 1 505

'Frakes, Ky. 

(includes Kentucky 

part of Eagan) —— 1249

Frazet Ky —————— 1223 

Frenchburg, Ky ——— 1390

Garrison, Ky. 

(includea Kentucky 

part of

Grahn, Ky ——————— 1262

Greenup, Ky. 

(includes Kentucky 

part of 

Ironton) ——————— 532

Haddix, Ky —————— 447

Hail, Ky ———————— 1058

Haldeman, Ky ————— 169

Handshoe, Ky ————— 1372

Harlan, Ky —————— 1015

Harman 

(Kentucky part 

combined with

Harold, Ky —————— 441 

Hazard North, Ky —— 334 

Hazard South, Ky —— 343

Head of Grassy,

Ky ———————————— 484

Heidelberg, Ky ——— 1340

Heidrick, Ky ————— 1501 

Hellier, Ky.-Va. —— 950

Hima, Ky ————————— 319

Hollyhill. Ky ———— 615 Hoskinston, Ky ——— 1456

Hubbard Springs 

(Kentucky part 

combined with 

Evarts) ———————— 914

Date of 

Publication

1978 

1978

1975 

1975 

1977 

1966

1978

1976 

1967

1966 

1977

1965 

1973

1961

1977 

1972

1972

1965 

1964 

1964 

1963

1966 

1977 

1978

1971 

1975 

1964 

1976 

1967 

1978

1974

Author

Rice, C. L. , 

and Ma ugh an, E. K. 

Ping, R. G., and 

Sergeant, R. E.

Newell, W. L. 

Lewis, R. Q., Sr. 

Hoge, H. P. 

Erickson, R. L.

Chaplin, J. R. , 

and Mason, C. E. 

England, K. J. 

Whit ting ton, C. L. , 

and Ferm, J. C.

Dobrovolny, E., 

Ferm, J. C., and 

Eroskay, S. 0. 

Lee, K. Y., 

Danilchik, Walter, 

and Rice, C. L. 

Mixon, R. B. 

Smith, J. H., 

Pomerene, J. B., 

and Ping, R. G. 

Patterson, S. H., 

and 

Hoaterman, J. W. 

Danilchik, Walter 

Froelich, A. J. , 

and McKay, E. J.

Alvord, D. C., 

and Miller, R. L. 

Rice, C. L. 

Seiders, V. M. 

Puffett, W. P. 

Cash ion, W.B.

Morris, R. H. 

Black, D. F. B. 

Trimble, D. E. , 

and Smith, J. H. 

Alvord, D. C. 

Rice, D. D. 

Reeves, R. C. 

Danilchik, Walter 

Lonev. R. A. 

Taylor, A. R.

Tazelaar, J. F. , 

and Newell, W. L.

TABLE l.—List of U.S. Geologic Survey Geologic Quadrangle (GQ) 

Maps for Eastern Kentucky. Location of maps shown in figure 1. — 

Continued

GQ Date of 

Quadrangle Number Publication

Ironton (Kentucky 

part combined with 

Kentucky part

of Greenup) ————— 532 1966

Irvine, Ky —————— 1285 1976

Isonville, Ky ———— 501 1966

Ivyton, Ky —————— 801 1969

Jackson, Ky —————— 205 1963

Jellico East 

(Kentucky part 

combined with 

Saxton) ———————— 1264 1975

Jellico West,

Tenn.-Ky. —————— 855 1969 

Jenkins East, Ky —— 1210 1974 

Jenkins Weat,

Ky.-Va. ———————— 1126 1973

Kay jay, Ky. 

(includes 

Kentucky part of 

Fork Ridge) ————— 1505 1978

Keokee, Va.-Ky. —— 851 1971

Kermit, Ky ——————— 178 1962 

Ketchen,

Kite, Ky ———————— 1317 1976

Krypton, Ky ————— 389 1965

Lancer, Ky —————— 347 1964

Landsaw, Ky —————— 201 1963 

Leatherwood, Ky —— 723 1968

Lee City, Ky ————— 198 1963 

Leighton, Ky ————— 1495 1978

Lenox, Ky ——————— 181 1962 

Levee, Ky ——————— 1478 1978 

Lick Creek, Ky ——— 716 1969

Lily, Ky ———————— 218 1963 

Livings ton, Ky ——— 1179 1974

Load, Ky ———————— 519 1966

London, Ky —————— 245 1963 

London SW, Ky ———— 195 1963

Louellen, Ky ————— 1060 1973

Louisa, Ky —————— 1462 1978

Author

Dobrovolny, E., 

Ferm, J. C., 

and Eroskay, S. 0. 

Hoge, H. P., 

Wigley, P. B., 

and Shawe, F. R. 

Englund, K. J., 

and DeLaney, A. 0. 

Rice, C. L. 

Prichard, G. E., 

and Johnaton, J. E. 

Outerbridge, W. F., 

and Van Vloten, Roger

Rice, C. L. , 

and Newell, W. L.

Englund, K. J. 

Wolcott, D. E.

Rice, C. L. 

Gualtieri, J. L.

Rice, C. L. , 

and Maughan, E. K. 

Miller, R. L., 

and Roen, J. B. 

Huddle, J. W., 

and Englund, K. J.

Englund, K. J. 

Hinrichs, E. N., 

and Rice, C. L. 

Mixon, R. B. 

Rice, C. L. , and 

Johns ton, J. E. 

Hansen, W. R., and 

Johns ton, J. E. 

Prostka, H. J., 

and Seiders, V. M. 

Post, E. V., and 

Johns ton, J. E. 

Haney, D. C., 

and Rice, C. L. 

Johnston, J. E. 

McDowell, R. C. 

McKay, E. J., 

and Alvord, D. C. 

Stager, H. K. 

Brown, W. R., 

and Osolnik, M. J. 

Sharps, J. A. 

Hatch, N. L. , Jr. 

Stager, H. K. 

Froelich, A. J. 

Connor, C. W., 

and Flores, R. M.

Hurley

(Kentucky part 

combined with 

parts of Majestic 

and Wharncliffe)— 748 

Hyden East, Ky——— 423 

Hyden West, Ky———1468 

Inez, Ky———————— 226

1968 Outerbridge, W. F.

1965 Prostka, H. J.

1978 Lewis, R. Q., Sr.

1963 Out**bridge, W. F.

Majestic, Ky. 

(includes Kentucky 

parts of Hurley 

and Wharni

Manchester

Maretburg,

Martin, Ky

Matewan, Ky—

cliffe)— 748 

, Ky ——— 318 

Ky ———— 338 

—————— 563

„ ———— •»?•»

1968 

1964 

1965

1 d££ 17OO 

1Q&<>

Outerbridge, W. F. 

Finnell, T. L. 

Schlanger, S. 0. 

Rice, C. L.

TVonr . U. A.
SANDSTONE UNITS IN EASTERN KENTUCKY G7

TABLE l.—List of U.S. Geologic Survey Geologic Quadrangle (GQ) 

Maps for Eastern Kentucky. Location of maps shown in figure 1. — 

Continued

GQ Date of 

Quadrangle Number Publication

Maulden, Ky —————— 1140

Mayking, Ky —————— 1309

McDowell, Ky ————— 732

McKee, Ky ——————— 1125

Means, Ky ——————— 1324

Meta, Ky ———————— 497 

Middlesboro North,

Ky ———————————— 300

Middlesboro South, 

Tenn.-Va. —————— 301

Mill Springs, Ky —— 1057 

Milo, Ky. (includes 

Kentucky part

of Webb) ——————— 543 

Mintonville, Ky ——— 1198

Mistletoe, Ky ———— 1474

Monticello, Ky ——— 1319 

Moodyville 

(Kentucky part 

combined with

Savage) ———————— 1318

Morehead, Ky ————— 1022 

Mount Vernon, Ky —— 902

Naugatuck, Ky. 

(includes Kentucky 

part of

Nevelsville, Ky —— 1326 

New Boston 

(Kentucky part 

combined with 

Kentucky part 

of Portsmouth) ——— 312

Nolansburg, Ky ——— 868

Ogle, Ky ———————— 1484 

Oil Springs, Ky ——— 586

Oldtown, Ky —————— 353 

Olive Hill, Ky ——— 1270

Oneida North 

(Kentucky part 

combined with 

Barthell) —————— 314

Paintsville, Ky ——— 495 

Pall Mall (Kentucky 

part combined with

Parmleysville , Ky. 

(includes 

Kentucky part of

Shorn Pineal ————— 1/.n<\

1974

1976 

1977 

1968 

1973

1976 

1966

1964

1964 

1967 

1972

1966 

1974

1978 

1976

1976 

1972

1971

1971 

1976

1964 

1978 

1970 

1964 

1978

1967 

1965

1975 

1977 

1978

1964 

1966

1977 

1968

1O77

Author

Lee, K. Y., 

and Jones , C. L. 

Rice, C. L. 

Outerbridge, W. F. 

Rice, C. L. 

Weir, G. W. , 

and Mumma, M. D. 

Weir, G. W. 

Wolcott, D. E., 

and Jenkins, E. C.

Englund, K. J. , 

Roen, J. B., 

and DeLaney, A. 0.

Englund, K. J. 

Jenkins, E. C. 

Lewis, R. Q. , Sr.

Jenkins, E. C. 

Lewis, R. Q., Sr., 

and Taylor, A. R. 

Volckmann, R. P., 

and Leo, G. W. 

Taylor, A. R.

Lewis, R. Q., Sr. 

Hoge, H. P., 

and Chaplin, J. R. 

Schlanger, S. 0., 

and Weir, G. W.

Alvord, D. C. 

Smith, J. H.

Sheppard, R. A. 

Hinrichs, E. N. 

Csejtey, Bela, Jr. 

Outerbridge, W. F. 

Ping, R. G., and 

Sergeant, R. E. 

Outerbridge, W. F. 

Whittington, C. L. , 

and Ferm, J. C. 

Englund, K. J., and 

Windolph, J. F. 

McDowell, R. C., 

and Weir, G. W. 

Rice, C. L., 

and Lee, K. Y.

Pomerene, J. B. 

Outerbridge, W. F.

Lewis, R. Q. , Sr. 

Greene, R. C.

TABLE 1.— List of U.S. Geologic Survey Geologic Quadrangle (GQ) 

Maps for Eastern Kentucky. Location of maps shown in figure 1.— 

Continued

GQ Date of 

Quadrangle Number Publication

Parnell, Ky —————— 861

Parrot, Ky —————— 236 

Pennington Gap,

Va.-Ky.-- —————— 1098

Pikeville, Ky ———— 480 

Pineville, Ky ———— 1129 

Plummers

Pomeroyton, Ky ——— 1184

Pond Run (Kentucky 

part combined with 

Kentucky part of

Porte rsburg, Ky ——— 359 

Portsmouth, Ky. 

<rtrcludes Kentucky 

part of 

Wheelersburg and

Powersburg, Ky. 

(includes 

Kentucky part

of Pall Mall) ——— 1377 

Prestonsburg, Ky —— 641 

Prichard (Kentucky 

part combined 

with Fallsburg) —— 584

Redbush, Ky —————— 708

Richardson, Ky ——— 1460

Rockholds, Ky ———— 677

Rose Hill, Ky ———— 1121

Rush, Ky ———————— 408 

Salt Lick, Ky ———— 1499

Salyersville North,

Ky ———————————— 276

Salyersville South,

Ky ———————————— 1373

Sandgap, Ky —————— 1100

Sandy Hook, Ky ——— 521

Savage, Ky. 

(includes Kentucky 

part of

Moodyville) ————— 1318

Sawyer, Ky —————— 179 

Saxton, Ky. 

(includes Kentucky 

part of 

Jellico East) ——— 1264

Scalf, Ky ——————— 1267 

Science Hill, Ky —— 1105

c<ii'f. if., —————— iAt<;

1970 

1963 

1973 

1965 

1974

1971 

1974

1978 

1964

1964

1977 

1967

1967 

1963

1968 

1978

1967 

1973

1976 

1965 

1978

1964

1977 

1973 

1966

1976 

1962

1975

1975 

1973

1978

1Q7R

Author

Lewis, R. Q. , Sr., 

and Luft, S. J. 

Crowder, D. F.

Miller, R. L. , 

and Roen, J. B. 

Alvord, D. C., and 

Holbrook, C. E. 

Froelich, A. J., 

and Tazelaar, J. F.

McDowell, R. C., 

Peck, J. H., and 

Mytton, J. W. 

Weir, G. W., and 

Richards, P. W.

Chaplin, J. R. , 

and Mason, C. E. 

Pomerene, J. B.

Sheppard, R. A.

Lewis, R. Q., Sr. 

Rice, C. L.

Sharps, J. A. 

Johns ton, J. E., 

and Donne 11, J. R. 

Rice, C. L. 

Sanchez, J. D., 

Alvord, D. C., 

and Hayes, P. T. 

Smith, J. H. 

Maughan, E. K., and 

Tazelaar, J. F. 

Maughan, E. K. 

Carl son, J. E. 

Philley, J. C.

Adkison, W. L. , and 

Johns ton, J. E.

Spengler, R. W. 

Gualtieri, J. L. 

Englund, K. J., 

and DeLaney, A. 0.

Lewis, R. Q., Sr. 

Puffett, W. P.

Rice, C. L. , 

and Newell, H. L. 

Weia, P. L. 

lay lor, A. R., and 

Lewis, R. Q., Sr. 

Haney, D. C., 

and Hester, N. C.
G8 CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE GEOLOGY OF KENTUCKY

TABLE 1. List of U.S. Geologic Survey Geologic Quadrangle (GQ) 

Maps for Eastern Kentucky. Location of maps stunon in figure 1.— 

Continued

Quadrangle

GQ Dace of 

Number Publication

Sharp Place 

(Kentucky part 

combined with

Parmleysville)———1405 1977 Taylor, A. R. 

Shopville, Ky———— 282 1964 Hatch, N. L., Jr. 

Sitka, Ky————————1398 1977 Hayes , P. T. 

Slade, Ky———————1183 1974 Weir, G. W. 

Soldier, Ky——————1233 1975 Philley, J. C.,

Hylbert, D. K.,

and Hoge, H. P.

Somerset, Ky—————1196 1974 Lewis, R. Q., Sr. 

Stanton, Ky——————1182 1974 Weir, G. W. 

Sturgeon, Ky—————1455 1978 Weir, G. W. 

Tallega, Ky——————1500 1978 Black, D. F. B. 

Thomas, Ky—————— 227 1963 Rice, C. L. 

Tilford, Ky—————— 451 1965 Puffett, W. P. 

Tiptop, Ky——————1410 1977 Danilchik, Walter 

Tygarts Valley,

Ky———————————— 289 1964 Sheppard, R. A. 

Tyner, Ky——————— 247 1963 Snyder, G. L. 

Varilla, Ky.-Va.—— 190 1963 Englund, K. J.,

Landis, E. R.,

and Smith, H. L. 

Varney, Ky—————— 180 1962 Huddle, J. W.,

and Englund, K. J. 

Vest, Ky————————1441 1978 Danilchik, Walter,

and Waldrop, H. W.

Vicco, Ky———————— 418 1965 Puffett, W. P. 

Vox, Ky————————— 224 1963 Puffett, W. P. 

Wallins Creek, Ky—1016 1972 Froelich, A. J. 

Wayland, Ky——————1451 1978 Hinrichs, E. N.,

and Ping, R. G.

Webb (Kentucky

part combined

with Milo)—————— 543 1966 Jenkins, E. C. 

Webbville, Ky———— 927 1971 Carlson, J. E. 

Wesleyville, Ky——1305 1976 Philley, J. C.,

and Chaplin, J. R.

West Liberty, Ky—— 589 1967 Englund, K. J.,

Huddle, J. W., 

and DeLaney, A. 0. 

Wharncliffe

(Kentucky part

combined with

Kentucky parts

of Majestic

and Hurley)————— 748 1968 Outerbridge, W. F. 

Wheelersburg

(Kentucky part

combined with

Kentucky part

of Portsmouth)—— 312 1964 Sheppard, R. A. 

Wheelwright, Ky——1251 1975 Outerbridge, W. F. 

White Oak, Ky————1480 1978 Sable, E. G. 

Whitesburg, Ky.-Va.

(includes Kentucky

part of

Flat Gap)——————1119 1973 Rice, C. L.,

and Wolcott, D. E.

Whitley City, Ky.

(includes

Kentucky part

of Winfield)———— 260 1964 Pomerene, J. B. 

Wiborg, Ky——————— 867 1970 Smith, J. H. 

Wildie, Ky—————— 684 1968 Gualtieri, J. L. 

Willard, Ky ——————1387 1977 Brown, W. R. 

Williamsburg, Ky—— 616 1967 Tabor, R. W. 

Williamson, Ky———— 187 1962 Alvord, D. C.,

and Trent, V. A.

Winfield (Kentucky

part combined with

Whitley City)———— 260 1964 Pomerene, J. B. 

Wofford, Ky—————— 617 1967 Smith, J. H.

TABLE 1. List of U.S. Geologic Survey Geologic Quadrangle (GQ) 

Maps for Eastern Kentucky. Location of maps shown in figure 1.— 

Continued

Quadrangle

GQ Date of 

Number Publication

Author

Wrigley, Ky- 170

Zachariah, Ky- -1452

1961

1978

Hosterman, J. W.,

and

Patterson, S. H. 

Black, D. F. B.

rivers have their headwaters generally in or near Pine 

and Cumberland Mountains where local relief is as 

much as 2,300 ft. The flood plains of the rivers have frequent winter and early spring flooding. Dams designed 

to control floods on the larger streams and rivers have 

empounded large reservoirs and increased the water 

resources of the area.

Eastern Kentucky has an annual rainfall that ranges 

from about 40 to 60 in. and has a mean annual temperature of about 58°F. Temperatures rarely exceed 100°F 

or drop below 0°F. The climate supports a dense forest 

of broadleaf deciduous trees and shrubs (Braun, 1950). 

The area has a moderately sparse population, and most 

inhabitants live along narrow stream valleys in small 

cities and towns. The major industry in eastern Kentucky is coal mining. Other important industries are gas 

and oil production, logging, and farming.

Many roads provide good access to most of eastern. 

Kentucky (fig. 3). Extensive and high road cuts along 

the primary State and Federal highways that cross the 

area expose a nearly complete Pennsylvanian stratigraphic section. Lee rocks and equivalent strata are best 

exposed along U.S. Interstate Highways 1-75 and 1-64 

as well as those roads that cross Pine and Cumberland 

Mountains, and the Pottsville Escarpment.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This report has been prepared in cooperation with 

the Kentucky Geological Survey which has provided the 

author with office space at its headquarters in 

Lexington and with a field vehicle for reconnaissance 

work. Gordon W. Weir gathered and compiled much of 

the crossbed data reported for the areas along the 

northwestern part of the eastern Kentucky coal field 

and compiled the maps related to the Livingston Conglomerate and Corbin Sandstone Members of the Lee 

Formation. William F. Outerbridge assisted in the compilation of the geologic map of the sub-Pennsylvanian 

surface.

GEOLOGIC SETTING

Strata of Pennsylvanian age overlie rocks of Mississippian age in eastern Kentucky. The boundary be-
SANDSTONE UNITS IN EASTERN KENTUCKY G9

MISSISSIPPI 

EMBAYMENT

FIGURE 2. Physiographic diagram of Kentucky (Lobeck, 1929). 

Pennsylvania!! strata underlie the Cumberland Plateau and the 

Western Coal Field. Other physiographic regions are the Blue 

Grass region underlain by Ordovician, Silurian, and Devonian 

rocks; the Knobs region, a narrow belt of conical hills, or knobs, 

consisting of Lower Mississippian (Osagean) shale and siltstone 

which are around the outer border of the Blue Grass region; the 

Mississippian Plateau region, underlain largely by Upper Mississippian carbonate units and divided by the Dripping Springs Escarpment, an east- and south-facing ridge generally capped by 

the Big Clifty Sandstone Member of the Golconda Formation 

(Chesterian); and the Mississippian Embayment region where 

Cretaceous and Tertiary sedimentary deposits rest on Paleozoic 

rocks. The Pottsville Escarpment borders the Cumberland 

Plateau on the northwest and is capped by Lower-to-Middle 

Pennsylvanian sandstone. Muldraughs Hill is a northeast-facing 

limestone-capped escarpment bordering the Mississippian 

Plateau region.

tween the systems is generally recognized in most of 

eastern Kentucky as an unconformity that is more 

strongly marked toward the north and northwest; in 

southeasternmost Kentucky in parts of the Cumberland 

overthrust sheet, identification of the systemic boundary has been hindered by poor exposures and by lack 

of biostratigraphic data. The underlying Mississippian 

rocks range in age from middle Osagean in northeastern Kentucky to youngest Chesterian along Pine and 

Cumberland Mountains.

The Mississippian rocks range from the relatively 

deep-water, prodelta terrigenous elastics of the Borden 

and Grainger Formations upwards through the generally shallow-water shelf carbonates of the Newman 

Limestone and its equivalents to the shallow-water and 

lower delta-plain deposits of terrigenous elastics and 

minor marine carbonates of the Pennington Formation 

and its equivalents. In northeastern Kentucky, where 

Pennsylvanian rocks overlie the Borden, the Borden is 

as much as 600 ft thick and consists largely of greenishgray shale and siltstone and minor amounts of grayishred shale. The uppermost member of the Borden Formation is the Renfro. In northeastern Kentucky the 

Renfro consists of a few feet of dolomite that has been

commonly included in the overlying carbonates of the 

Newman Limestone. These elastics were from the 

northeast, probably from the Acadian tectonic belts of 

Northeastern United States and Eastern Canada, and 

were deposited down a southwesterly dipping regional 

slope.

Carbonates of the Newman Limestone and its equivalents form a wedge that thickens southeastward. 

Where these carbonates directly underlie a Pennsylvanian strata in the outcrop belt along the Pottsville Escarpment, they are as much as 300 ft thick and consist 

largely of massive light-gray fossiliferous limestone. In 

most of southeastern Kentucky, Pennsylvanian rocks 

rest on strata commonly identified as Pennington Formation. Equivalent strata consisting largely of shale 

and siltstone were assigned to the upper member of the 

Newman Limestone by Englund and Windolph (1971) 

locally in northeastern Kentucky. These strata thicken 

southeastward into the Appalachian basin (Wilpolt and 

Marden, 1959). The Pennington is as much as 250 ft 

thick along the Pottsville Escarpment and about 850 ft 

thick at the type section at Pennington Gap, Va., about 

k mi east of Kentucky on Cumberland Mountain. The 

Pennington consists of grayish-red and greenish-gray
G10 CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE GEOLOGY OF KENTUCKY

84° 83°

FIGURE 3. Geographic setting of eastern Kentucky showing counties and major roads and cities.

shale, variegated shale, dark- to medium-gray shale 

and siltstone, thick beds of light-gray, fine-grained to 

pebbly sandstone, thin beds of argillaceous limestone 

and dolomite, and locally a few thin beds of coal. Clastics of the Pennington and equivalent formations were 

transported westward or southwestward across a prograding delta into and across the Appalachian basin from

source areas of metamorphic and sedimentary rocks in 

and east of the present Piedmont province (de Witt and 

McGraw, 1979).

In northeastern Kentucky, differential uplift along 

the axis of the Waverly Arch (Woodward, 1961) produced shoaling as early as middle Meramecian time. This 

shoaling caused erosion and irregular thinning of carbo-
SANDSTONE UNITS IN EASTERN KENTUCKY Gil

nate members of the Newman Limestone through middle Chesterian time (Englund, 1972, p. 2108; Dever and 

others, 1977, p. 15; Ettensohn, 1977, p. 23). According 

to Pryor and Sable (1974, fig. 9, p. 299), thinning of 

upper Chesterian strata (Pennington Formation) northerly and westerly on the flanks of the Cincinnati Arch 

in northern Kentucky suggests emergence of part of 

that area. The emergence may have been accompanied 

by a southward tilting of the craton and an upwarping 

of the Cincinnati Arch (Craig and Connor, 1979, pi. 6A; 

de Witt and McGraw, 1979, p. 36). Thin coal beds in the 

Pennington in places along the Pottsville Escarpment 

(Rice, 1972; Anderson and Hester, 1977, p. 32) and in 

many localities near the southeast border of Kentucky 

indicate that as a result of the emergence swamps 

formed on a low coastal plain and tidal flats.

Uplift and southward tilting of the North American 

craton in Late Mississippian time resulted in a regional 

truncation of Mississippian and older strata in areas 

north of Kentucky. In the northern part of the Illinois 

basin, Middle Pennsylvanian strata rest on rocks as old 

as Ordovician. In the northern part of the Appalachian 

basin (southwestern New York and northwestern 

Pennsylvania), Early Pennsylvanian strata overlie 

rocks of Late Devonian age. The Mississippian-Pennsylvanian unconformity extends across Kentucky and implies a possible removal of about 900 ft of Mississippian 

strata in western Kentucky and about 200 ft in northeastern Kentucky. In southeastern Kentucky, the 

thickness of missing strata is unknown because detailed 

information concerning the uppermost Mississippian 

and the lowermost part of the Pennsylvanian is lacking. 

Englund and Henry (written commun., 1980) indicate 

that the systemic boundary is at the unconformity in 

southeastern Kentucky except in a narrow belt along 

Cumberland Mountain where the Pocahontas Formation (Early Pennsylvanian age) or equivalent strata 

conformably overlie the Bluestone Formation (Mississippian) or equivalent strata (see fig. 8). According to 

Wanless, (1975b, p. 73) the northward and northwestward bevelling of Paleozoic strata in the Late Mississippian resulted in a plain. This plain was later uplifted 

and was incised by pre-Pennsylvanian streams. In 

western Kentucky, streams cut subparallel channels as 

much as 200 ft deep down a southwest-trending paleoslope (Bristol and Howard, 1971). The largest of these, 

the Brownsville paleovalley originated in the Appalachian area, probably in areas northeast of Ohio and 

Pennsylvania (Pryor and Potter, 1979, p. 49).

The distribution of the Newman Limestone compiled 

from GQ Maps along the Pottsville Escarpment (fig. 4) 

suggests that limestone once extended across much of 

northeastern Kentucky. Erosion prior to deposition of 

Pennsylvanian sediments has removed much of the 

limestone where it was probably thinnest and where it

was more exposed to weathering. The resulting limestone subcrop pattern (fig. 4) shows outliers and the irregularly serrated front of a northwest-facing cuesta or 

cuestas. Figure 5 illustrates in cross section how the regional southeast dip of Mississippian strata into the Appalachian basin and local minor folding resulted in the 

formation of cuestas prior to burial by Middle Pennsylvanian deposits. Wanless (1975a, p. 24) identified a 

similar northwest-facing cuesta of equivalent Mississippian limestone in the subsurface in eastern Ohio and 

western Pennsylvania that occupies a similar position 

along the northwestern eroded edge of the limestone. 

Wanless stated that the cuesta was a drainage divide 

and a regional reconstruction of sub-Pennsylvanian 

drainage patterns (see fig. 32) suggests that an escarpment .or cuesta extended from western Pennsylvania 

southwestward into Ohio and central Kentucky and 

formed the drainage divide between the Appalachian 

and Eastern Interior basins. The approximate position 

of the cuesta in Late Mississippian-Early Pennsylvanian time is shown on figure 30. In south-central Kentucky, the cuesta bends around the Jessamine Dome on 

the Cincinnati Arch (see fig. 7) and extends northwestward into Indiana, dipping southwestward into the 

Eastern Interior basin. The best demonstration of the 

cuesta is Muldraughs Hill, a prominent escarpment capped by Upper Mississippian limestone that flanks the 

southwestern side of the Blue Grass region (see fig. 2).

The subcrop pattern of the Mississippian formations 

indicates southeast- to south-trending paleochannels are 

present across the subcrop. Those paleochannels are on 

the back slope of the cuesta which dips away from the 

Jessamine Dome, and they drain southeasterly in the 

northern part of the outcrop belt and more southerly in 

the southern part. What may be remnants of major 

paleochannels northwest of the cuesta that trend southwesterly are on Pilot Knob (fig. 4).

Extending northeastward from the vicinity of Pilot 

Knob, subaerial weathering has developed a paleokarst 

in the Newman Limestone.

LOWER BOUNDARY OF THE PENNSYLVANIAN SYSTEM

Although the Lee Formation in eastern Kentucky has 

generally been considerd to be the basal Pennsylvanian 

unit, stratigraphic studies in the last 20 years have 

placed the boundary between Mississippian and 

Pennsylvanian rocks in the Pennington or Lee Formations in parts of the Cumberland overthrust sheet, and 

in many other areas, at the base of the Breathitt Formation. Basal Pennsylvanian strata, but not the oldest 

Pennsylvanian strata, are best known from outcrops 

along the Pottsville Escarpment. There basal strata are 

commonly underclay, coal, or carbonaceous shale. Basal 

conglomerate and sandstone are rare and generally
G12 CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE GEOLOGY OF KENTUCKY

38'

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 KILOMETERS

Pennington Formation < 

and equivalents

37° —

FIGURE 4. Generalized geologic map of the sub-Pennsylvanian surface in areas of outcrop in eastern Kentucky.

occur only where paleochannels have been cut into the 

underlying Mississippian rocks. Generally the systemic 

contact separates terrestrial from marine rocks and is 

at the base of a thin coal bed that overlies limestone, 

red or green shale, or siltstone.

In most outcrops near the escarpment, the contact 

between Pennsylvanian and Mississippian rocks is a

low-angle unconformity. Away from the sub-Pennsylvanian channels, the contact is locally a paraconformity 

which some workers have interpreted as a facies-related or transitional boundary (Haney, 1979). Thus in 

outcrops where Mississippian red and green shale are 

overlain by Pennsylvanian coal and bioturbated carbonaceous shale, the boundary may be misinterpreted
SANDSTONE UNITS IN EASTERN KENTUCKY G13

as transitional. Where Upper Mississippian strata also 

contain thin coal beds, the nature of the systemic 

boundary can only be determined by local and regional 

lateral stratigraphic relations. Along the escarpment, 

the systemic boundary is commonly in poorly exposed 

sequences of shale and siltstone. However, on all detailed maps of the area, the boundary has been interpreted as an unconformity. The GQ Maps indicate that 

commonly at least 100 ft and locally more than 200 ft of 

underlying Mississippian strata were eroded prior to 

the deposition of strata of Pennsylvanian age.

In northeastern Kentucky, the existence of an unconformity that separated rocks of Mississippian and 

Pennsylvanian age was questioned by Home and Ferm

(1970), Home and others (1971), Ferm and others

(1971), Ferm (1974), and Home and others (1974). They 

postulated a depositional model in which the largely 

terrestrial deposits above the unconformity are in facies 

relationship with marine strata below the unconformity. The "Lee-Newman barrier-shoreline model" of 

Home and others (1971) identifies orthoquartzite (Lee 

Formation of Pennsylvanian age) as beach-barrier deposits that grade landward into lagoonal and lower 

delta-plain subgraywacke shale and coal (Breathitt Formation of Pennsylvanian age) and grade seaward into 

red and green shale (Pennington and Borden Formations of Mississippian age) that surrounded offshore 

carbonate islands (Newman Limestone of Mississippian

age). This model does not consider the greatly different 

ages of the rocks as determined from the fossil evidence 

above and below the unconformity. Rather, the model 

postulates a westerly migrating shoreline environment 

of intertonguing terrestrial and marine sediments all of 

approximately the same age.

Field relations between rock units in northeastern 

Kentucky, the area for which the Lee-Newman barriershoreline depositional model was proposed, have shown 

the hypothesis to be untenable (Dever [1973] 1980; Rice 

and others, 1979, Ettensohn, 1979, p. 124). Distribution 

and thickness of marine and terrestrial rock units in 

this area are related to the movement of fault blocks 

during late stages of Mississippian and early stages of 

Pennsylvanian erosion and deposition (Sheppard, 1964). 

Furthermore, detailed mapping by Englund and Windolph (1971) has shown that the Carter Caves 

Sandstone mistakenly ascribed to the Lee Formation 

by Home and others (1974, p. 102) underlies the unconformity and is Late Mississippian in age.

The unconformity between rocks of Mississippian and 

Pennsylvanian age is not as obvious toward the south 

and southeast. Englund and Smith (1960) reported that 

in the Cumberland Mountain area thick crossbedded, 

coarse-grained, quartzose conglomeratic sandstone of 

the Lee Formation grades laterally to thin, wavy-bedded, very fine-grained sandstone of the Pennington 

Formation. They interpreted the intertonguing and latMississippian-Pennsylvanian 

unconformity p^

Mbc

Horizon of Olive Hill clay bed

METERS 30-

20- 

10- 

0

FEET —100

50

5 MILES

0 5 KILOMETERS

Pb,

Mp, 

Mn, 

Mbna, 

Mbc,

EXPLANATION

PENNSYLVANIAN

Breathitt Formation 

MISSISSIPPIAN

Pennington Formation

Newman Formation

Nancy Member of Borden Formation

Cowbell Member of Borden Formation

FIGURE 5. Generalized section showing remnant northwest-facing cuestas of Mississippian limestone in northeastern Kentucky in Middle 

Pennsylvanian time. Datum is the Olive Hill clay bed of the Breathitt Formation of Middle Pennsylvanian age (Wanless, 1975a, p. 35). 

See figure 4 for location of section.
G14 CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE GEOLOGY OF KENTUCKY

eral intergrading of the Lee and Pennington as evidence of partial contemporaneity of the formations and 

depositional continuity across the systemic boundary. 

As a result of the intertonguing and intergrading of the 

Pennington and Lee, poor exposures, and the lack of 

definitive paleontologies! data, the systemic boundary 

has not been precisely located in a large part of the 

Cumberland overthrust sheet. Geologic quadrangle reports along Cumberland Mountain published in the 60's 

and 70's show the systemic boundary to be at the base 

of either the Chadwell Member or the White Rocks 

Sandstone Member of the Lee. More recently, Englund 

(1979, p. C4; see also Miller, 1969, p. 9) stated that the 

White Rocks intertongues with the Bluestone Formation of Mississippian age (see fig. 8). Therefore, Englund placed the systemic boundary at the top of the 

White Rocks or at the base of the overlying Dark Ridge 

Member of the Lee Formation.

Authors of geologic quadrangle reports along much of 

Pine Mountain place the systemic boundary in the 

upper part of the Pennington Formation above the Little Stone Gap Member, which contains marine fossils of 

Mississippian age, and below coal beds and carbonaceous shales, which contain flora and microspores of 

Pennsylvanian age. Locally the systemic boundary is in 

the Middlesboro(?) Member of the Lee Formation in the 

outcrop belt of the central and southwestern parts of 

Pine Mountain because marine rocks of probable Mississippian age are reported in the lower part of the member.

In places in the Cumberland overthrust sheet, the 

base of the Pennsylvanian has been placed at the base 

of the Middlesboro Member of the Lee (or equivalent 

strata) where these rocks overlie marine strata of Mississippian age (Alvord and Miller, 1972; Miller, 1974; 

Englund, 1979). In these areas the systemic boundary 

is an unconformity, which Englund (1974, p. 238) 

suggests is probably coextensive with the widespread 

unconformity at the top of the Mississippian to the 

northwest.

In much of eastern Kentucky, basal Pennsylvanian 

strata, regardless of their age, are known only from 

scanty drill-hole data. Most logs of drill holes in eastern 

Kentucky lack detailed descriptions of lithologic units; 

the drillers commonly record only major changes in 

lithology that are useful for identifying formational 

units. Moreover, this part of the stratigraphic section 

generally lacks geophysical logs because Pennsylvanian 

strata and the upper part of the Upper Mississippian 

strata are not major targets in oil and gas exploration. 

Reasonable inferences, however, can be made from the 

drillers' logs about the nature of the Pennsylvanian 

strata and the position of the systemic boundary when 

these logs are interpreted with the aid of data from the 

study of nearest outcrops, drill cuttings and logs of the

few coreholes, and the few geophysical logs of wells 

that penetrate this part of the section. Analyses of such 

data indicate that the systemic boundary is generally at 

the base of dark-gray carbonaceous shale and siltstone 

of Pennsylvanian age, which contrasts sharply with underlying calcareous red and green shale and siltstone of 

Mississippian age. The Mississippian strata locally contain dark-gray shale and sandstone in part similar to 

shale and sandstone in the Pennsylvanian but commonly differ from the Pennsylvanian as they are calcareous and interbedded with red and green shale and 

siltstone.

Three important lithostratigraphic reference surfaces 

relevant to the location of the systemic boundary are 

recognized in the subsurface. The first is the base of 

thick (greater than 100 ft) Pennsylvanian conglomerate, 

which may be at the boundary or as much as 200 ft 

above it. The second is the uppermost occurrence of red 

or green shale, which is characteristic of the Mississippian marine formations and is commonly immediately 

beneath the systemic boundary. The third reference 

surface, the top of the Newman Limestone, locally underlies Pennsylvanian shale and sandstone, as in much 

of northeastern Kentucky.

Figure 6 is a generalized contour map of the base of 

the Pennsylvanian System in eastern Kentucky. It is 

based largely on interpretations of data from drillers' 

logs and geologic quadrangle maps. The map shows the 

base of the Pennsylvanian System to be a surface generally inclined toward the southeast and locally broken 

by faults. Near the Pottsville Escarpment (see fig. 7), 

the contours reflect the mapped sub-Pennsylvanian erosion surface; elsewhere, most large features and irregularities are the result of post-Pennsylvanian folding. In easternmost Kentucky, however, the existence 

of a southwesterly trending paleovalley cut into the 

Mississippian surface is suggested by the -600 ft and 

- 700 ft contours north of the trace of the Pine Mountain overthrust fault. The contours of this paleovalley 

and a suggested southeasterly trending distributary 

channel appear to coincide with thickness contours constructed by Miller (1974, p. 64) of the lowermost 

Pennsylvanian conglomeratic sandstone in Virginia and 

adjacent parts of Kentucky. The similarity of the structure contours and thickness contours indicates that the 

sandstone may be a channel fill. There is an elongate 

depression about 15 mi northwest of the paleovalley 

shown by the -400, -500, and -600 foot contours on 

figure 6 that may be a distributary channel from the 

paleovalley and which in turn apparently had distributaries of its own to the south and west.

Southeast of Pine Mountain, in the cross-faulted 

Cumberland overthrust sheet, the base of the Pennsylvanian is an asymmetrical trough with the deepest part 

on the southeast side. The shape of the trough east of
SANDSTONE UNITS IN EASTERN KENTUCKY G15

EXPLANATION

Contours Hachures indicate 

closed depression. Contour 

interval 100 feet north of 

and 200 feet south of Pine 

Mountain overthrust fault 

,_ Thrust fault Sawteeth on

upper plate 

Fault Bar and ball on

downthrown side 

Fault Arrow shows source 

of movement

37° —

FIGURE 6. Generalized contour map of the base of the Pennsylvanian System in eastern Kentucky, modified from Coskren and Rice (1979). 

Because of inaccuracies in recorded collar elevations and obscurities in drillers' logs, accuracy of detail in eastern Kentucky is probably 

about 100 ft north of the Pine Mountain overthrust fault and 200 ft south of the fault.

the Rocky Face fault may be due in large part to the 

location of the axis of a paleovalley near the southeastern side.

The flora of basal Pennsylvanian strata in Kentucky 

has been little studied. Assignment of relative ages to

the basal strata in different parts of eastern Kentucky 

is therefore impossible except in the most general 

terms. The oldest Pennsylvanian strata of record in 

Eastern United States are east of Kentucky in southwestern Virginia and eastern West Virginia (Englund,
G16 CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE GEOLOGY OF KENTUCKY

Arndt, and Henry, 1979). Those strata are assigned to 

the Pocahontas Formation and contain a floral assemblage not found in Kentucky, though some species 

of the assemblage have been identified in the Dark 

Ridge member of the Lee Formation on Cumberland 

Mountain (Englund, 1979). Campbell, who named the 

Pocahontas Formation (Campbell, 1896) and the Lee 

Formation (Campbell, 1893) and who mapped extensively along the central and southern parts of the 

Pottsville Escarpment in Kentucky (Campbell, 1898a, 

b), pointed out that Early Pennsylvanian strata thinned 

toward the northwest across the Appalachian basin. He 

stated that much of the thinning was due to onlap and 

that as much as one-quarter of the basal Lee section is 

not present along the western border of the basin. 

Northeast of where Campbell mapped in northeastern 

Kentucky, extensive areas of basal Pennsylvanian 

strata of Middle Pennsylvanian age including the Olive 

Hill clay bed of the Breathitt Formation (Wanless, 

1975a, p. 35) and the Corbin Sandstone Member of the 

Lee Formation rest on Mississippian rocks. Thus regional stratigraphic relations suggest that earliest 

Pennsylvanian deposition began in areas east of Kentucky and later Pennsylvanian deposition progressively 

onlapped an eroded Mississippian surface toward the 

northwest until Middle Pennsylvanian time when the 

Mississippian surface was completely buried in northeastern Kentucky.

GENERAL OUTLINE OF THE

PENNSYLVANIAN SYSTEM

IN EASTERN KENTUCKY

The Pennsylvanian rocks of eastern Kentucky lie in 

the central part of the Appalachian basin, a structuraldepositional feature that extends from New York to 

Alabama. This coal-bearing sequence consists largely of 

sandstone, siltstone, and shale and forms a wedge that 

thickens southeastward toward the axis of the Appalachian basin. The axis of the basin lies parallel to but 

beyond the southeast border of Kentucky (see fig. 30).

The Pennsylvanian strata are about 1,500 ft thick in 

northeastern Kentucky where the section is most complete (in Kentucky) but relatively thin. Southeast of the 

Pine Mountain overthrust fault, the section is locally 

more than 4,600 ft thick, but in this area much of the 

upper part is missing due to erosion. A comparison of 

stratigraphic intervals in places in northeastern Kentucky with equivalent intervals in southeastern Kentucky shows a more than twenty-fold thickening southeastward.

Discontinuities and lateral and vertical variations of 

lithology in the Pennsylvanian strata, particularly those 

of Middle and Late Pennsylvanian age, make correlation and stratigraphic analysis difficult. Diagnostic

marine and plant fossils are uncommon; few fossils have 

been intensively studied and most are assignable to 

wide-ranging forms.

In eastern Kentucky the Pennsylvanian includes the 

Lee, Breathitt, Conemaugh, and Monongahela Formations and part of the Pennington Formation locally at 

the base (fig. 7). The Lee crops out in two belts of 

steeply dipping strata southeast of the Pine Mountain 

overthrust fault on the Cumberland overthrust sheet. 

The Lee also crops out in a broad belt along the 

Pottsville Escarpment where the formation in part intertongues with and in part is overlain by the Breathitt 

Formation. The Conemaugh and Monongahela, undivided in Kentucky, crop out in a syncline in northeastern Kentucky where the stratigraphic section is generally thinnest.

The Pennsylvanian strata were deposited in deltaic, 

coastal plain, alluvial valley, swamp, marsh, and shallow lake and bay environments. Lower Pennsylvanian 

strata (parts of the Pennington, Lee, and Breathitt 

Formations), particularly in the southeastern part of 

the area, are dominated by thick, fining-upward sequences of conglomerate, pebbly sandstone, and 

sandstone units which are largely orthoquartzitic. Middle Pennsylvanian strata (parts of the Lee and 

Breathitt) generally consist of siltstone, shale, subgraywacke, and minor amounts of limestone, siderite, 

and many coal beds. The sandstone content of the preserved part of the Middle Pennsylvanian Series increases toward the east and generally upward in the 

section.

Figure 7 also shows the outcrop area of the Upper 

Pennsylvanian rocks in northeastern Kentucky. These 

deposits are assigned to the Conemaugh and Monongahela Formations and consist largely of grayish-red, 

greenish-gray, and variegated shale and siltstone which 

contrast with the gray hues of the underlying Lower 

and Middle Pennsylvanian rocks. Subgraywacke, in 

part pebbly, and minor amounts of limestone and calcareous shale are interbedded with the Upper Pennsylvanian shale and siltstone.

Dark-gray shale and thin lenses of limestone were deposited intermittently in eastern Kentucky in shallow 

marine and brackish environments during minor transgressions throughout the Pennsylvanian. The distribution of what appears to be the only Early Pennsylvanian marine transgression is illustrated in figure 35. 

The bulk of the marine rocks was deposited during Middle Pennsylvanian time. In general, evidence of the earlier transgressions is found in easternmost Kentucky 

and of the later transgressions in the middle and western parts of the outcrop area. During Late Pennsylvanian time, shallow seas made small incursions into 

northeastern Kentucky from the northwest (Rice and 

others, 1979, p. F19).
SANDSTONE UNITS IN EASTERN KENTUCKY G17

85'

38°-:

37

EXPLANATION

————————— Contact 

_——L__ Anticline

— ——L. — — Syncline

Conemaugh and Monongahela Formations,

undivided 

Breathitt Formation

Lee and Breathitt Formations, undivided

Lee Formation (locally includes upper part 

of Pennington Formation)

Mississippian and older rocks

FIGURE 7.—Generalized geologic map of eastern Kentucky showing chief structural elements and distribution of Pennsylvanian formations. Axis of eastern Kentucky syncline drawn as defined by the base of the Magoffin Member of the 

Breathitt Formation.

. Fault—Arrow indicates left-lateral movement 

, Fault—Bar and ball on downthrown side 

. Tnrust fault—Sawteeth on upper plate
G18 CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE GEOLOGY OF KENTUCKY

The depositional pattern of Pennsylvanian strata was 

strongly influenced by subsidence along the axis of the 

Appalachian basin. This area of greatest subsidence 

may have periodically provided an avenue for invasion 

of marine waters into the easternmost part of the State 

as well as being a depocenter for fluvial distributary 

systems. The distribution of coarse elastics and marine 

rocks in the Pennsylvanian of eastern Kentucky 

suggests these strata were deposited by a southwestward and westward prograding delta system near sea 

level. Irregular subsidence resulted in the formation of 

local to large swamps now represented by coal beds and 

associated rocks.

THE PENNINGTON AND LEE FORMATIONS

IN THE AREA OF THE 

CUMBERLAND OVERTHRUST SHEET

PENNINGTON FORMATION

The upper part of the Pennington as mapped along 

Pine Mountain locally includes carbonaceous shale and 

thin coal beds that contain Pennsylvanian flora 

(Maughan, 1976). This part of the Pennington is as 

much as 150 ft thick and is poorly exposed, mainly in 

the area of the Nolansburg and Roxana quadrangles 

(also see fig. 11). The relationship between mapped 

units suggests that channeling at the base of the 

Middlesboro Member of the Lee Formation has cut out 

Pennsylvanian strata of the Pennington along Pine 

Mountain northeast and southwest of the Bledsoe and 

Whitesburg quadrangles.

At its type section on Cumberland Mountain at Pennington Gap, Va., the Pennington is overlain by the 

White Rocks Sandstone Member of the Lee Formation. 

The uppermost shale unit of the type Pennington contains a thin coal bed of Late Mississippian age (Miller 

and Roen, 1973). Southwest along the Cumberland 

Mountain outcrop belt, the Pennington is also Mississippian in age and is overlain either by the White Rocks 

Sandstone Member or the older Chadwell Member of 

the Lee Formation. Northwest of the Pine Mountain 

fault, Pennsylvanian strata assignable to the Pennington were either eroded out or were not deposited, 

and the Mississippian Pennington strata are unconformably overlain by the Lee or Breathitt Formations.

LEE FORMATION

The Lee Formation of Late Mississippian and Early 

and Middle Pennsylvanian age was named by Campbell 

(1893) from exposures along the Cumberland Mountain 

outcrop belt in Lee County, Va. In the type area the 

formation is commonly more than 1,600 ft thick and 

consists largely of thick lenses of quartzose sandstone 

and conglomerate. The sandstone lenses are resistant

and generally form prominent hogbacks at or near the 

crests of Cumberland and Pine Mountains and on Rocky 

Face Mountain, a large ridge just east of the Rocky 

Face fault (fig. 7). The Lee thins northwestward across 

the Cumberland overthrust sheet to Pine Mountain 

where the formation ranges in thickness from about 

1,100 ft to 1,500 ft.

In the type area the Lee has been divided into eight 

members (fig. 8). The Pinnacle Overlook, Chadwell, 

White Rocks Sandstone, Middlesboro, Bee Rock 

Sandstone, and Naese Sandstone Members are mostly 

quartzose sandstone and conglomerate. The Dark 

Ridge and Hensley Members are mostly shale, 

siltstone, thin-bedded silty sandstone, and coal; but the 

Hensley also locally contains quartzose sandstone and 

conglomeratic sandstone.

PINNACLE OVERLOOK MEMBER

The Pinnacle Overlook Member (Mississippian) is 

named for a scenic overlook called the Pinnacle on the 

northeast side of Cumberland Gap on Cumberland 

Mountain (fig. 9).

The lithology of the Pinnacle Overlook Member is typical of the Lee 

Formation and consists of thick-bedded, well-sorted, fine- to 

medium-grained quartzose sandstone in the lower and upper 

parts and massive conglomeratic quartzose sandstone in the middle part. Crossbedding is conspicuously developed throughout. 

The thickness increases from 230 feet at the Pinnacle Overlook 

to 360 feet approximately 2 miles northeast of Cumberknd Gap. 

(Englund, 1964a, p. B33).

The lower and upper contacts of the Pinnacle Overlook 

Member and other similar sandstone tongues of the Lee 

and in the upper part of the Pennington Formation may 

be either gradational or sharp. Ripple bedding is conspicuous in the upper beds of the Pinnacle Overlook 

Member in the type area (fig. 10).

At the type area the Pinnacle Overlook Member 

overlies the marine Little Stone Gap Member of the 

Pennington Formation (Englund and DeLaney, 1966, p. 

D50). It is overlain by an unnamed marine unit of the 

Pennington that consists of greenish-gray and grayishred shale locally containing a thin bed of fossiliferous 

limestone. Both fossiliferous marine units are discontinuous. Near the type area the Pinnacle Overlook 

Member is locally overlain by a quartzose sandstone, 

the Chadwell Member of the Lee Formation (Englund, 

1964a).

The Pinnacle Overlook Member has been referred to 

informally as the "lower tongue of the Lee Formation" 

(Englund and others, 1964). On Pine Mountain pebbly 

quartzose sandstone bodies as much as 200 ft thick crop 

out in at least two stratigraphic levels in the Pennington Formation; the bodies at each level have been 

called a "sandstone tongue (?) of the Lee Formation"
SANDSTONE UNITS IN EASTERN KENTUCKY G19
G20 CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE GEOLOGY OF KENTUCKY

FIGURE 9.—View of the Pinnacle Overlook Member of the Lee 

Formation near the Pinnacle on Cumberland Mountain.

(Csejtey, 1970; Froelich and Tazelaar, 1974). The lower 

and most persistent of these sandstone bodies along 

Pine Mountain is the "upper Maxton sand" of drillers 

(Wilpolt and Marden, 1959, plate 28, section D-D'). 

Wilpolt and Marden refer to the upper sandstone body, 

which is the Pinnacle Overlook Member, as the "Princeton Sandstone." In Tennessee, quartzose pebbly 

sandstone of Mississippian age is also reported in the 

Pennington (Milici and others, 1979) and has been mapped in places as the Pinnacle Overlook Member of the 

'Lee Formation (Englund, 1968).

CHADWELL MEMBER

The Chadwell Member of the Lee Formation is 

named for exposures about 450 ft below the southeast 

side of Chadwell Gap on Cumberland .Mountain about 

10 mi northeast of Cumberland Gap (Englund, 1964a). 

The member consists of one or more resistant ledges of

well-sorted, fine- to coarse-grained, quartzose 

sandstone which commonly has a thin basal bed containing quartz pebbles as much as 1 in. in diameter. The 

member locally grades into wavy-bedded, very finegrained sandstone of the Pennington Formation. In 

places the member contains olive-gray shale as well as 

carbonaceous shale and thin coal beds. The member is 

about 180 ft thick at the type section. It thins to the 

northeast along Cumberland Mountain and thickens 

southwest of Cumberland Gap to as much as 350 ft 

where locally it is mostly conglomeratic sandstone. In 

places the Chadwell is directly overlain by the White 

Rocks Sandstone Member of the Lee Formation. 

Where directly overlain the two members commonly 

have been mapped as a single unit (Englund and 

others, 1964, p. B13). In localities, where the White 

Rocks wedges out, the Chadwell grades upward into 

the Dark Ridge Member of the Lee Formation.

The Chadwell Member has been referred to informally as "sandstone member A" and locally has been 

mapped as such near the Rocky Face fault on Pine 

Mountain in the Middlesboro North quadrangle (Englund and others, 1964). In adjacent areas on Pine 

Mountain, the Chadwell locally may be included in the 

lower part of Middlesboro (?) Member because neither 

the unconformity nor the members can be readily differentiated. The Chadwell is at the stratigraphic position of the Princeton Sandstone northeast of the type 

area in Virginia and West Virginia (Englund, 1979, p. 

C7) but apparently has no distinct correlatives to the 

southwest in Tennessee.

FIGURE 10.—Ripple bedding in the upper part of the Pinnacle 

Overlook Member.
SANDSTONE UNITS IN EASTERN KENTUCKY G21

WHITE ROCKS SANDSTONE MEMBER

The White Rocks Sandstone Member is named for a 

conspicuous south-facing cliff at the crest of Cumberland Mountain in the central part of the Ewing quadrangle (Englund and others, 1963). The sandstone is 

quartzose, fine to coarse grained, and has conglomeratic lenses containing well-rounded quartz pebbles ranging from 0.5 to 1 in. in diameter in troughs of largescale festoon crossbeds (Tazelaar and Newell, 1974). 

The member includes an olive-gray, very fine-grained, 

wavy-bedded sandstone lens, 0 to 50 ft thick. The 

White Rocks Sandstone Member has a maximum thickness of 340 ft in its type area but pinches out both to 

the northeast and southwest along Cumberland Mountain. The member generally grades upward into the 

Dark Ridge Member. In the Hubbard Springs quadrangle, however, it is in places directly overlain unconformably by the Middlesboro Member of the Lee Formation (Tazelaar and Newell, 1974).

The White Rocks Sandstone Member has not been 

identified in the Lee Formation on Pine Mountain, but 

some beds correlative with it may be included in the 

lower part of the Middlesboro(?) Member, because the 

position of the unconformity has not been adequately located.

DARK RIDGE MEMBER

The Dark Ridge Member is named for exposures of 

thin-bedded sandstone and carbonaceous shale on the 

south end of Dark Ridge on the north side of Cumberland Gap in the Middlesboro South quadrangle (Englund, 1964a, p. B34). The member commonly contains 

several thin coal beds, including the Cumberland Gap 

coal bed which is as much as 4 ft thick in the type area. 

The member is about 60 ft thick at its type locality and 

is as much as 300 ft thick along the Cumberland Mountain where it is poorly exposed between massive 

sandstone units of the underlying Chadwell-White 

Rocks Sandstone and overlying Middlesboro Members. 

In the Ewing quadrangle, the upper part of the Dark 

Ridge includes a wavy-bedded, very fine-grained light 

gray and light-olive-gray sandstone that is locally as 

much as 120 ft thick (Englund and others, 1963, p. 

B15). The unconformity at the base of the overlying 

Middlesboro in places completely cuts out the Dark 

Ridge.

The Dark Ridge has been mapped and labeled 

"sandstone-and-shale member B" in the Middlesboro 

North quadrangle (Englund and others, 1964). Though 

it has not been identified on Pine Mountain, equivalent 

strata containing Pennsylvanian coal beds (Maughan, 

1976) are probably included in the upper part of the 

Pennington Formation in the Nolansburg (Csejtey,

1970), Louellen(Froelich, 1973), Benham (Froelich and 

Stone, 1973), Roxana (Maughan, 1976) and Whitesburg 

quadrangles (Rice and Wolcott, 1973). Figure 11 shows 

that the Dark Ridge crops out in and underlies in a relativejly narrow east-northeast trending area which lies 

just northwest of and along the axis of a sub-Pennsylvanian paleovalley (see also fig. 13). The relation of the 

Dark Ridge to the paleovalley suggests that it may consist in part of alluvial deposits of an Early Pennsylvanian river.

Englund and Delaney (1966, p. D49) have correlated 

the Dark Ridge Member with the Pocahontas Formation which contains a Lower Pennsylvanian flora including Neuropteris pocahontas in Russell County, Va. Although Englund (1979) has projected the MississippianPennsylvanian boundary at the base of the Dark Ridge 

which, as noted previously, is gradational with either 

the underlying White Rocks Sandstone or Chadwell 

Members, it is possible that the systemic boundary may 

be a paraconformity within the Dark Ridge that has not 

yet been recognized. Descriptions of strata of the Dark 

Ridge commonly include wavy-bedded, very finegrained, olive-gray sandstone that is more typical of 

Mississippian than Pennsylvanian rocks. But in the absence of definitive fossil data and good exposure, the 

position and character of the Mississippian-Pennsylvanian boundary within the Dark Ridge will remain unclear.

MIDDLESBORO MEMBER

The Middlesboro Member contains the thickest and 

most extensive sequences of conglomeratic sandstone 

beds that are assigned to the Lee Formation in the area 

of the Cumberland overthrust sheet. It forms prominent ridges along both Cumberland and Pine Mountains 

and makes up most of Rocky Face Mountain (fig. 12). 

The member was named for exposures just east of 

Middlesboro and north of Cumberland Gap in the 

Middlesboro South quadrangle (Englund, 1964a, p. 

B35).

The Middlesboro ranges from less than 300 ft to more 

than 700 ft in thickness (fig. 13). In its type area the 

member is about 475 ft thick, of which less than 30 ft 

is shale and siltstone. The sandstone is mostly thickly 

crossbedded, fine- to coarse-grained, and commonly 

contains quartz pebbles less than 1 in. but as much as 

2.5 in. in diameter (fig. 14). The Middlesboro generally 

consists of three or four coalescing conglomeratic 

sandstone units tl—v thin and pinch out to the east and 

southeast (Miller, 1974, p. 119) as well as to the northeast along Cumberland Mountain (Englund and DeLaney, 1966). Thinning of the Middlesboro results from 

pinching out of individual sandstone units into sequences of shale, siltstone, and fine-grained sub-
G22 CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE GEOLOGY OF KENTUCKY

graywacke that contain discontinuous coal beds. Massive quartzose conglomeratic sandstone units grade locally into thin-bedded, fine-grained subgraywacke (Englund and DeLaney, 1966). The Middlesboro contains 

coalified plant material and plant impressions, and in 

places thin beds of coal and carbonaceous shale (Miller, 

1974, p. 61; Englund, 1968, p. 17). The basal contact of 

the member is an unconformity that has a local relief of 

only a few feet (fig. 15). The regional relief at the contact may be as much as 400 ft, because the unconformity in some areas truncates the Dark Ridge Member 

and cuts into either the Chadwell or White Rocks 

Sandstone Members. The upper contact of the Middlesboro is locally sharp but commonly is gradational into 

or intertonguing with the overlying unit.

The Middlesboro Member is map unit "sandstone 

member C" on some quadrangles covering parts of Pine 

and Cumberland Mountains (Englund and others, 

1964). Along much of Pine Mountain, the Middlesboro 

is queried because it may contain unrecognized members of the Pennington and Lee Formations. For example, in the Wallins Creek quadrangle, the basal conglomeratic sandstone bed of the Middlesboro(?) Member is in places overlain by a unit, as much as 60 ft 

thick, composed of brachiopod-bearing, olive-gray,

slightly calcareous shale (Froelich, 1972). This fossiliferous unit may be Mississippian in age and is 

perhaps separated by an unrecognized unconformity 

from overlying sandstone correlative with the type 

Middlesboro. Marine fossils have not been found elsewhere in the Middlesboro or Middlesboro(?) Member in 

Kentucky.

The Middlesboro Member was not mapped at the 

northeast end of Pine Mountain, but it is probably equivalent to both the lower and middle sandstone members 

of the Lee Formation of Alvord (1971) and all of the 

lower member and most of the upper member of the 

Lee Formation of Rice (1973). To the southwest, the 

Middlesboro is mapped in Tennessee in areas adjacent 

to Kentucky (Englund, 1968). In the nomenclature of 

the Tennessee Division of Geology, the Middlesboro 

Member may be equivalent in part to the Warren Point 

Sandstone of the Gizzard Group and is probably equivalent to the Sewanee Conglomerate and Newton 

Sandstone of the Crab Orchard Mountains Group (Milici 

and others, 1979, p. 63).

Figure 13 shows the general variations in thickness 

of the Middlesboro, the thickest member of the Lee 

Formation. East of Rocky Face fault, the member is 

thickest along the axis of a southwest-trending linear

84

RUSSELL

FORK

FAULT

ROCKY FACE 

FAULT

outheast limit of 

Pennsylvanian rocks

TENNESSEE

ACKSBORO FAULT

50 KILOMETERS

FIGURE 11.—Distribution of the Dark Ridge Member of the Lee Formation and correlative strata of the Pennington Formation of Pennsylvanian age (patterned).
SANDSTONE UNITS IN EASTERN KENTUCKY G23

FIGURE 12.—View of dipping strata of the Middlesboro Member of the Lee Formation on Pine Mountain just south of Pineville, Ky. View 

is toward the east across the Rocky Face fault where the Cumberland River cuts through Pine Mountain. Sandstone cliffs in the background to the right side of the photo are part of the Bee Rock Sandstone Member of the Lee Formation.

feature that is a continuation of a similar feature on figure 6 previously identified as a paleovalley. The continuity of the paleovalley across the Pine Mountain 

overthrust fault is more obvious if the Cumberland 

overthrust sheet on figure 13 is moved about 4 mi to 

the southeast to its original position estimated by Englund (1974, p. 33) for the area near the Russell Fork 

fault.

A second paleovalley, on the west side of and roughly 

alined with the Rocky Face fault, is suggested by the 

great variations in thickness of the Pennington Formation and of the Middlesboro Member from the east to 

the west side of the Rocky Face fault on Pine Mountain. The Pennington thins from about 1,100 to 400 ft; 

the Middlesboro thickens from about 300 to 500 ft. 

Paleocurrent directions for the fluvial sandstones in the 

Lee Formation in the Cumberland overthrust sheet are 

generally southwesterly; however, they show a southerly trend near the Rocky Face fault, perhaps reflecting the influence of south-trending channels in this valley (BeMent, 1976).

A third paleovalley is indicated at the southwestern 

end of the Cumberland overthrust sheet where strata 

of the Middlesboro attain a thickness in excess of 600 ft.

HENSLEY MEMBER

The Hensley Member, named for exposures in 

Hensley Flats (Englund, 1964a, p. B36), comprises the 

largely nonresistant beds that lie between the top of 

the ridge-forming Middlesboro Member and the base of 

the overlying cliff-making Bee Rock or Naese 

Sandstone Members of the Lee Formation. The 

Hensley consists mostly of shale, siltstone, and thinbedded subgraywacke but locally contains resistant 

beds of quartzose sandstone and conglomeratic 

sandstone; one such conglomeratic sandstone has been 

mapped from the Balkan quadrangle (Froelich and 

Tazelaar, 1973) northeastward along Pine Mountain to
G24 CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE GEOLOGY OF KENTUCKY

83C 82°

EXPLANATION

_500___.... Contour—Dashed where approximately located; dotted where 

above land surface. Contour 

interval 100 feet (30 m)

———±=.___ Fault—Arrows show relative of 

r movement

.Thrust fault—Sawteeth on upper 

plate

Axis of paleovalley

KENTUCKY

\ WEST 

--^VIRGINIA

37<

ta in indicated area 

rom Miller (1974)

Southeast limit of 

Pennsylvanian rocks

VIRGINIA

TENNESSEE o

50 KILOMETERS

JACKSBORO FAULT

ROCKY FACE 

FAULT

FIGURE 13.—Generalized thickness contours of the Middlesboro 

Member of the Lee Formation in the Cumberland overthrust 

sheet. Contours are based on interpretation of published data in 

geologic quadrangle maps. About two-thirds of the Middlesboro(?) Member on Pine Mountain is here considered to be equivalent to the type Middlesboro. Subsurface contours in Virginia 

and adjacent parts of Kentucky are based on isolith maps of Miller's (1974, figs. 43, 44) lower and middle quartz arenite members 

of the Lee, which are approximately equivalent to the Middlesboro.

the Bledsoe quadrangle (Csejtey, 1971). Thin coal beds 

and underclays are common in the member. The widespread Tunnel coal bed, which ranges from 0 to 50 in. 

in thickness, occurs at or near the top of the Hensley. 

At the type section, along Skyland Road and U.S. 

Highway 25 E on the northwest side of Cumberland 

Gap, the Hensley is about 350 ft thick. Along Cumberland Mountain and Pine Mountain east of Rocky Face 

fault, the member ranges in thickness from about 200 

to 450 ft. West of Rocky Face fault on Pine Mountain, 

the Hensley is generally less than 200 ft thick and is

truncated by the unconformity at the base of the overlying Bee Rock or Naese Sandstone Members (Englund 

and others, 1964).

The Hensley was locally called "sandstone and shale 

member D" (Englund and others, 1964) (fig. 6). In the 

northeastern part of Pine Mountain, the Hensley is the 

unnamed map unit composed of shale, siltstone, and 

sandstone that lies between the middle and upper 

sandstone members of the Lee Formation of Alvord 

(1971). In some quadrangles, it has been included in the 

upper part of the middle member of the Lee Formation
SANDSTONE UNITS IN EASTERN KENTUCKY G25

(Rice, 1973). To the southwest, the Hensley is mapped 

in some areas in Tennessee adjacent to Kentucky (Englund, 1968). The Hensley is probably equivalent in the 

nomenclature of the Tennessee Division of Geology to 

the sequence of shale, siltstone, and sandstone that 

overlies the Sewanee Conglomerate or Newton 

Sandstone and underlies the Rockcastle Conglomerate.

BEE ROCK SANDSTONE AND 

NAESE SANDSTONE MEMBERS

The uppermost members of the Lee Formation are 

the Bee Rock Sandstone and Naese Sandstone. The 

Bee Rock is the topmost member in most areas east of 

Rocky Face fault and the Naese is the topmost member 

west of the fault (fig. 16). In most areas where the 

Naese is present, it unconformably overlies the Bee 

Rock. In places the Naese apparently entirely replaces 

the Bee Rock (Englund and others, 1964).

FIGURE 14.—Basal conglomeratic beds of the Middlesboro member of 

the Lee Formation near Hanging Rock on U.S. Highway 421 

near Harlan, Ky.

FIGURE 15.—View of Hanging Rock on U.S. highway 421 near Harlan, Ky., showing the unconformity at the base of the Middlesboro Member of the Lee Formation where it overlies thin-bedded 

sandstone and siltstone of the Pennington Formation.

The Bee Rock Sandstone Member was named from 

exposures at Big Stone Gap, Va., about 6 mi east of 

Kentucky on Cumberland Mountain (Campbell, 1893). 

As shown in figure 16, the member pinches out to the 

southeast in western Virginia. In Kentucky the Bee 

Rock ranges from about 80 to 325 ft in thickness and 

generally thickens toward the northwest. The basal 

contact of the Bee Rock, though a disconformity with a 

local relief of several tens of feet, is a useful stratigraphic datum in the Lee Formation east of Rocky Face 

fault where it overlies the nonresistant Hensley Member. West of Rocky Face fault, the lower boundary of 

the Bee Rock is locally difficult to identify in those 

places where the underlying Hensley is thin and poorly 

exposed. In the localities where the Bee Rock is not 

overlain by the Naese, it grades into and locally intertongues with the overlying Hance formation. At the
G26 CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE GEOLOGY OF KENTUCKY

northeast end of Pine Mountain, the Bee Rock is partly 

or wholly equivalent to the upper member of the Lee 

Formation (fig. 8) or to the upper sandstone member of 

Alvord and Miller (1972).

The Naese Sandstone Member was named for Naese 

Cliff, a conspicuous topographic feature on Cumberland 

River about 8 mi east-southeast of Pineville, Ky. 

(Ashley and Glenn, 1906, p. 35). The cliff is situated 

near the eastern limit of the member (fig. 16) where the 

member grades laterally to shale and very fine to finegrained, thin-bedded sandstone of the Hance Formation 

(Englund and others, 1963). The Naese decreases in

grain size upward and grades laterally into strata of the 

overlying Hance; where the overlying Yellow Creek 

Sandstone Member of the Hance directly overlies the 

Naese, the two are locally mapped as a single unit (Englund and others, 1964). In the type area, the Naese is 

as much as 250 ft thick.

The sandstone of both the Bee Rock Sandstone and 

Naese Sandstone Members is quartzose, fine- to coarsegrained, pebbly to conglomeratic, and has quartz pebbles as much as 0.5 in. in diameter. Where the Naese 

rests on the Bee Rock, identification of the boundary 

between the members is difficult because of their

84° 83C 82C

37C

EXPLANATION

Bee Rock and Naese Sandstone 

Members

Bee Rock Sandstone Member

--200 -- Contour—Dashed where above

-700— surface. Contour interval 100 feet

WEST 

VIRGINIA

\

RUSSELL

FORK

FAULT

outh east limit of 

Pennsylvanian rocks

Fault—Arrows show relative 

direction of movement

Thrust fault—Sawteeth on upper 

plate

KENTUCKY

w M

ROCKY FACE 

FAULTV

FIGURE 16.—Map showing thickness contours for the Bee Rock 

Sandstone Member of the Lee Formation east of Rocky Face 

fault and those for the combined Bee Rock Sandstone and Naese 

Sandstone Members of the Lee Formation west of Rocky Face

fault in the Cumberland overthrust sheet and nearby areas in 

Virginia and Kentucky. Contours for the Bee Rock in the subsurface in the northeastern part of the area are generalized from 

Miller (1974, p. 69, fig. 45).
SANDSTONE UNITS IN EASTERN KENTUCKY G27

lithologic similarity. This difficulty has resulted in different interpretations of the distribution of these members. Englund (1968, p. 18) suggests that the Bee Rock 

is truncated by an unconformity at the base of the 

Naese west of Cumberland Gap and is absent in Tennessee; he (1968, plate 4) also shows the Naese wedging 

out southeastward in Tennessee. In this report, the 

Bee Rock and Naese are treated as a single unit in 

areas west of the Rocky Face fault. Geological quadrangle reports suggest that these combined units thicken northwestward in Kentucky from a minimum of 

about 200 ft on Cumberland Mountain to as much as 400 

ft on Pine Mountain.

Lee sandstone and conglomerate beds crop out locally 

north of Pine Mountain along the White Mountain fault 

zone in the Pineville quadrangle (Froelich and Tazelaar, 

1974); these strata are probably equivalent to the combined Bee Rock and Naese Sandstone Members (see 

figs. 7 and 17). Lee sandstone and conglomerate beds 

are also preserved locally in fault slices in the Pine 

Mountain overthrust fault zone. (See figure 17.)

The Bee Rock and Naese are partly or wholly equivalent to the Rockcastle Sandstone Member of the Lee 

Formation where it crops out along the Pottsville Escarpment on the northwestern border of the Appalachian basin in eastern Kentucky (Englund, 1968, p. 18). 

These members are also probably equivalent to the 

Rockcastle Conglomerate of the Crab Orchard Mountains Group in the nomenclature of the Tennessee Division of Geology (Milici and others, 1979, p. G3).

The top of the Lee Formation in the Cumberland 

overthrust sheet has traditionally marked the boundary 

between the Lower and Middle Pennsylvanian Series in 

southeastern Kentucky. Recently Englund and others 

(1979, p. 72-73) have placed the series boundary in the 

proposed Pennsylvanian System stratotype section in 

West Virginia at a stratigraphic level above equivalents 

to the Bee Rock Sandstone Member. The Naese 

Sandstone Member, because it overlies the Lower 

Pennsylvanian Bee Rock, may range in age from Early 

to Middle Pennsylvanian.

LEE AND BREATHITT FORMATIONS ALONG

THE NORTHWESTERN PART 

OF THE EASTERN KENTUCKY COAL FIELD

By C. L. Rice and G. W. Weir

The Lee Formation along the western margin of the 

eastern Kentucky coal field is characterized, like the 

Lee of the type area, by massive cliff-forming sequences of quartzose, in part conglomeratic, sandstone. 

The sandstone cliffs form the Pottsville Escarpment. 

The name Lee was first applied along the Pottsville Escarpment by Campbell (1898a, b) who placed the top of 

the formation at the top of the Corbin Sandstone Member and assigned all underlying Pennsylvanian strata to 

the Lee Formation. Campbell (1898b, p. 3) assigned the 

overlying Pennsylvanian strata, which consist largely of 

shale, siltstone, and subgraywacke, to the Breathitt 

Formation. The name was taken from Breathitt 

County, Ky., which lies more than 20 mi east of the 

area that he mapped. Campbell's selection of the top of 

the Corbin for a formation boundary is unsatisfactory, 

because the member does not extend through the area. 

Along its margins, the Corbin pinches out into shale 

and siltstone or grades into nonresistant subgraywacke 

indistinguishable from sandstone in the Breathitt.

Geologists in the early part of the quadrangle-mapping program attempted to adapt Campbell's nomenclature to the different stratigraphic conditions of their 

map areas. Some placed the contact between the Lee 

and Breathitt at the top of the Corbin. Other geologists 

placed the contact at the top of the highest resistant 

quartzose sandstone or at the base of an overlying coal 

bed. On a few maps, the Lee-Breathitt boundary was 

projected without a contact being shown. Where no 

mappable criteria were available, the strata were designated as "Lee and Breathitt Formations, undivided."

Detailed geologic mapping along the western margin 

of the coal field gradually made clear that the Lee intertongued and graded laterally into the Breathitt. The 

application of the name "Lee Formation" was restricted 

in the area to those previously named sandstone members of the Lee that were shown by mapping to have 

regional extent (Weir and Mumma, 1973). Only three 

members, whose distribution is shown in figure 17, 

meet these criteria: the Livingston Conglomerate Member, the Rockcastle Conglomerate Member, and the 

Corbin Sandstone Member. The general relation of 

these Lee members to those described in the Cumberland overthrust sheet is shown in figure 18. Another 

stratigraphic unit, the Grayson sandstone bed of Whittington and Ferm (1967) of the Lee Formation, is commonly thin and has been mapped locally in a few quadrangles in northeastern Kentucky.

Several formal and informal members of the Lee 

have been used in the geologic-quadrangle reports. 

These include the Beattyville Shale Member, the Marsh 

Creek Sandstone Tongue, the Upper Corbin Sandstone 

Tongue, and several sandstone and shale members designated by alphabetic letters. The Beattyville Shale 

Member, because it was poorly defined and had been 

applied to different stratigraphic intervals, has been 

abandoned (Weir, 1975). The Marsh Creek Sandstone 

Tongue, whose type section is in the northwestern part 

of the Hollyhill quadrangle, is described as the "first 

cliff-forming, thick-bedded sandstone stratigraphically 

below" the Corbin Sandstone Member (Loney, 1967).
G28 CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE GEOLOGY OF KENTUCKY

85° 84°

39° —

38C

37°

\ OHIO

EXPLANATION

yzgj Grayson sandstone bed 

Corbin Sandstone Member 

Rockcastle Conglomerate Member

Iflf Livingston Conglomerate Member 

Lee Formation undivided

WEST 

VIRGINIA

VIRGINIA

TENNESSEE

FIGURE 17.—Generalized outcrop map of the Lee Formation in eastern Kentucky showing the distribution of members in the western part 

of the area. The depositional pinchouts of members are shown by zero isopachs. Cross section A - A' is shown in figure 18. Cross sections 

B - B' and C - C' are shown in figure 25.

The Marsh Creek has not been extensively mapped, 

and its relation to the Corbin in adjacent areas is not 

clear. The name "Upper Corbin Sandstone Tongue" 

was applied in the Hollyhill quadrangle to a sandstone 

unit that overlies the River Gem coal bed (Loney,

1967). The sandstone unit is now known to be younger 

than the Corbin Sandstone Member. Its lithologic characteristics as well as its stratigraphic position suggest 

that the sandstone unit is a part of the Breathitt Formation (Rice and Newell, 1975).
SANDSTONE UNITS IN EASTERN KENTUCKY G29

LIVINGSTON CONGLOMERATE MEMBER OF THE

LEE FORMATION AND 

RELATED SANDSTONE UNITS

The Livingston Conglomerate Member was named by 

Miller (1908, p. 28) for exposures of conglomeratic 

sandstone near Livingston, Ky (fig. 19). It consists of 

interstratified and intergraded sandstone and conglomerate in deposits as much as 120 ft thick that occupy a 

paleovalley as much as 4 mi wide and more than 20 mi

long (fig. 20A). The sandstone is composed of subangular to subrounded, fine to coarse grains of clear quartz, 

and sparse to abundant well-rounded quartz and minor 

chert pebbles mostly less than 1 in. in diameter (fig. 

21). The Livingston contains some blocks of limestone 

near its base and sparse chert fragments and pebbles 

derived from the underlying Mississippian carbonates. 

Crossbeds of the member indicate a southerly current 

direction (fig. 20B).

Section restored in 

area of Pine Mountain 

overthrust fault zone

METERS FEET 

300 -r-1000

_J

oo 

2 

2

UJ 

CL

CL CLOD

GO

oo 

oo

S

	EXPLANATION

Pb Breathitt Formation

mn Manchester coal bed

Phn Hance Formation

	Lee Formation

Pic Corbin Sandstone Member

Plr Rockcastle Conglomerate Member

PI I Livingston Conglomerate Member

Plbr Bee Rock Sandstone Member

Plh Hensley Member

Plm Middlesboro Member

PMId Dark Ridge Sandstone Member

Mlw White Rocks Sandstone Member

Mlp Pinnacle Overlook Member

Mp Pennington Formation

Mn Newman Limestone

FIGURE 18.—Schematic cross section showing relations of major members of the Lee Formation in eastern Kentucky. 

Datum is top of Corbin Sandstone Member of the Lee Formation or base of overlying Manchester coal bed of the 

Breathitt Formation. Heavy line is Mississippian-Pennsylvanian unconformity that is locally projected within the Dark 

Ridge member of the Lee and equivalent strata.
G30 CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE GEOLOGY OF KENTUCKY

-. v

FIGURE 19.—Outlier of the Pottsville Escarpment, Indian Fort Mountain near Berea, Ky., near the northern limits of outcrop of the 

Livingston Conglomerate Member of the Lee Formation. The Livingston, the darker cliff-forming unit capping the ridge, rests on strata 

of the Newman Limestone, the lighter cliff-forming unit.

The Livingston paleovalley (fig. 20A) is the largest of 

four conglomerate- and sandstone-filled paleovalleys 

that cross the sub-Pennsylvanian outcrop belt. The distribution of conglomerate and sandstone deposits in a 

paleovalley in the western part of Alcorn quadrangle 

about 6 mi east of the Livingston channel (fig. 22) 

suggests that the valleys and their fill were the results 

of several episodes of erosion and deposition (Rice, 

1972). A paleovalley several miles east of Pilot Knob 

(fig. 4) cuts Mississippian strata as old as the Cowbell 

Member of the Borden Formation (Weir and Richards, 

1974). The channel fill is mostly fine- to mediumgrained pebbly sandstone but also contains pebbles and 

cobbles as much as 10 in. in diameter of chert derived 

from the Newman Limestone. These three paleovalleys 

had small tributaries now represented by poorly exposed, discontinuous lenses of pebbly sandstone on 

ridgetops.

A major paleovalley east of Somerset, Ky. (fig. 4), 

cuts through the Pennington Formation at the northern 

end of the paleovalley. Details of the geology of this

paleovalley are not well known, because the Pennington 

is poorly exposed and the Pennsylvanian fill consists of 

nonresistant siltstone and shale as well as discontinuous 

lenses of sandstone and pebbly sandstone.

Another paleovalley is represented by isolated channel deposits along the Pottsville Escarpment in the 

Levee quadrangle (McDowell, 1978) at Pilot Knob. 

These deposits, identified as Lee Formation by 

McDowell (1978), are from 150 to 200 ft stratigraphically below the southeast- or south-trending channels 

that cross the sub-Pennsylvanian outcrop belt. They 

are thought to be remnants of a southwest-trending 

drainage system that extended from Ohio across central 

Kentucky into the Eastern Interior basin in western 

Kentucky. The conglomerate and conglomeratic 

sandstone that fills the channel on Pilot Knob (see fig. 

4) in the Levee quadrangle is as much as 125 ft thick 

and contains rounded to well-rounded pebbles as much 

as 1.5 in. in diameter (figs. 23 and 24). Crossbedding in 

these rocks indicates a dominant southwesterly or 

southerly current direction.
84°15' SANDSTONE UNITS IN EASTERN KENTUCKY 84°15' G31

37° 

30'

37° 

22' 

30"

Livingston

N—Number of measur 

ments. Length is proportional to consistency

FIGURE 20.—Contour maps showing channel and channel fill of the 

Livingston Conglomerate member of the Lee Formation. A. Map 

of the Livingston channel as shown by thickness contours of the 

combined Newman Limestone and Pennington Formation (Mississippian). Contour interval 50 ft. B. Map showing thickness

contours of the Livingston and resultants of dip-directions of 

crossbeds calculated using methods of Curray (1956). Contour 

interval 40 ft. Length of resultant of dip-directions of crossbeds 

is proportional to consistency of measurements (vector sum: 

number of measurements).
G32 CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE GEOLOGY OF KENTUCKY

FIGURE 21.—Planar sets of beds in the Livingston Conglomerate Member showing stringers and lenses of pebbles along bedding planes.

In some areas east and northeast of Clay City (see 

fig. 3), karst developed in the Newman Limestone in 

Late Mississippian or Early Pennsylvanian time. Sink 

holes in the upper surface of the limestone unit trapped 

pebbly sandstone in Early Pennsylvanian time (Weir, 

1974a, b; Hoge, 1977). Conglomerate and sandstone in 

the sink holes and the previously described paleochannels are commonly stained reddish brown to light 

brown by iron carbonate and iron oxide cement. Ironimpregnated molds and casts of large stems and fragments of bark occur sparsely in these rocks.

Small paleochannels that drained to the southeast toward the subsiding Appalachian basin were formed at 

the same time as the larger channels. The small channels, because they lack thick deposits of coarse elastics, 

have generally not been mapped. They are inferred to 

occupy lows on the sub-Pennsylvanian surface (fig. 4). 

One small paleochannel with several of its tributaries 

has been traced about 10 mi across parts of the Soldier, 

Olive Hill, and Ault quadrangles (Englund and Windolph, 1971, fig. 3). The channel, as much as 40 ft deep,

is largely filled with shale and siltstone but, in places, 

has a basal bed of poorly sorted pebbles and boulders 

of locally derived chert, sandstone, and limestone as 

much as 3 ft thick.

ROCKCASTLE CONGLOMERATE MEMBER OF THE 

LEE FORMATION

The Rockcastle Conglomerate Member crops out 

along the southern part of the Pottsville Escarpment in 

Kentucky (fig. 17). Campbell (1898a, b) named the 

Rockcastle Conglomerate (Lentil) from exposures along 

the Rockcastle River west and southwest of London, 

Ky. This member, like other sandstone members of the 

Lee, is quartzose, fine to coarse grained, and contains 

well-rounded quartz pebbles up to 5 in. but more commonly about 0.3 in. in diameter. Lenses of pebble conglomerate are most common near the base of the member, which is an irregular surface cut into underlying 

strata. The sandstone is characterized by medium- to 

large-scale trough sets of crossbeds that indicate a do-
SANDSTONE UNITS IN EASTERN KENTUCKY G33

minant southwesterly current direction. The member 

thins or splits into tongues to the northwest and 

pinches out in that direction into siltstone and shale or 

grades into very fine to fine-grained, ripple-bedded 

sandstone. The uppermost beds grade upward from 

coarser to finer-grained sandstone and commonly grade 

into siltstone. The southeastern margin of the Rockcastle is not exposed. The Rockcastle is a cliff-forming unit 

that in places is more than 200 ft thick but over much 

of the outcrop area is about 100 ft thick.

The Rockcastle and the Livingston Conglomerate 

Members do not crop out in the same area, but the base 

of the Rockcastle at its northwestern edge of outcrop is 

estimated to be about 150 ft or more above the 

Livingston. Cross section C-C' of figure 25 shows the 

relation of the Rockcastle to a channel-fill sandstone at 

the base of the Pennsylvanian strata that is similar to 

the Livingston. The Rockcastle has been traced southwestward into Tennessee where, in terms of the

nomenclature used by the Tennessee Division of Geology, it is probably equivalent to only the upper part of 

the Rockcastle of the Crab Orchard Mountains Group.

The lower part of the Rockcastle is correlated by Englund (1968, p. 18) with the Naese Sandstone Member 

of the Lee Formation of the eastern part of the coal 

field. This correlation suggests that the Rockcastle is 

probably of Early and Middle Pennsylvanian age (Rice, 

1978, p. A109).

UNNAMED QUARTZOSE SANDSTONE UNITS BELOW

THE CORBIN SANDSTONE MEMBER 

ALONG THE POTTSVILLE ESCARPMENT

Unnamed ledge- and cliff-forming sandstone units, 

some more than 100 ft thick, are interstratified with 

named members of the Lee along the Pottsville Escarpment. Most of the thicker units are confined to the 

southern part of the outcrop belt. Sandstone in these

FIGURE 22.—View of the western edge of a quartzose sandstone- and 

conglomerate-filled channel cut into the Newman Limestone near 

the southern edge of the Alcorn quadrangle (Rice, 1972). 

Maximum thickness of sandstone and conglomerate is about 30 ft

and it extends to the east (right hand side of photo) about 0.4 mi. 

Channel is in the central part of a north-south oriented paleovalley that is about 2 mi wide and 180 ft deep.
G34 CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE GEOLOGY OF KENTUCKY

units is commonly quartzose, crossbedded, in part 

sparsely micaceous, fine- to medium-grained, and locally contains well-rounded pebbles of quartz and grades 

to conglomerate. Some sandstone units contain lenses 

of thin-bedded siltstone and silty shale as much as 15 ft 

thick. The sandstone units commonly have sharp bases 

scoured into shale and siltstone. The sandstone units 

grade upward and laterally into ripple-bedded 

sandstone or siltstone and shale. Studies of dip directions of crossbeds in some of these units by Blancher 

(1970, p. 17) and the authors indicate that the dominant 

current direction was to the southwest. Only sparse 

fossils are noted in these units and include casts of 

woody material and fine carbonaceous flakes. The 

sandstone units appear to be migrating regionally nonpersistant channel-fill deposits. In the GQ Maps published before 1973, these sandstone units generally 

were mapped as part of the Lee; in later reports, the 

units were shown to intertongue with and grade into 

the Breathitt Formation and were included in the 

Breathitt.

CORBIN SANDSTONE MEMBER OF THE LEE FORMATION

The Corbin was named from exposures near Corbin, 

Ky., where it is as much as 130 ft thick (Campbell, 

1898a, b). The sandstone, which weathers pink to 

grayish orange, is generally coarse grained at the base 

and grades irregularly to fine grained at the top. It contains lenses of pebbles. Rounded pebbles as much as 2 

in. in diameter are present, but most pebbles are less 

than 0.5 in. in diameter. In general, both the number 

and the diameter of pebbles increase northeastward 

along the length of the sandstone body.

The Corbin is the most widespread Lee sandstone 

unit cropping out in eastern Kentucky (fig. 26). It is exposed along almost the full extent of the Pottsville Escarpment (fig. 17). It pinches out to the northwest in 

northeastern Kentucky near Olive Hill, Ky. It extends 

eastward into the subsurface and is brought to the surface by uplift along faults in two small areas west of 

Paintsville, Ky. It pinches out to the southeast in the 

central and southern parts of the outcrop belt and exFIGURE 23.—Massive quartz-pebble conglomerate on Pilot Knob in the Levee quadrangle (McDowell, 1978).
SANDSTONE UNITS IN EASTERN KENTUCKY G35

FIGURE 24.—Crossbedded conglomerate and conglomeratic sandstone on Pilot Knob in the Levee quadrangle (McDowell, 1978).

tends southwestward into Tennessee. As shown in figure 27, the Corbin is generally less than 200 ft thick but 

attains a thickness of 250 ft in the Pomeroyton and 

Slade quadrangles east of Richmond, Ky. (Weir, 1974b; 

Weir and Richards, 1974).

The basal contact of the Corbin is sharp and irregularly wavy and has relief of as much as 100 ft in a distance of 2,000 ft. Deep scours that underlie the contact 

trend subparallel to the westerly or southwesterly current directions indicated by the dip directions of crossbeds (fig. 28). In the northern part of the outcrop belt, 

the Corbin is at or near the base of the Pennsylvanian 

stratigraphic section and commonly fills channels 

eroded into Newman Limestone. To the south, older 

underlying Pennsylvanian strata thicken so that at the 

Tennessee border the Corbin is as much as 700 ft above 

the base of the Pennsylvanian. Along the southeastern 

pinchout edge of the Corbin, the basal contact commonly climbs stratigraphically and the unit thins abruptly along the side of the deposit and feathers out in 

shale and siltstone. The Corbin grades laterally in many

places to lenses of light-brown- to pink-weathering, locally rooted, fine-grained sandstone as much as 20 ft 

thick and several miles wide (Black, 1977; Haney and 

Rice, 1978). These lenses of sandstone probably represent flood plain deposits adjacent to the channels in 

which the Corbin river system flowed. The Corbin 

along its pinchout edge and at its top commonly intertongues with siltstone and shale or grades into ripplebedded fine-grained sandstone. The member contains a 

few lenses of shale and siltstone and, rarely, thin coal 

beds. The only fossils observed in the member are 

coalified or iron-impregnated plant fragments.

Most of the Corbin Sandstone Member is in planar 

and trough sets, as much as 10 ft thick, of low- to highangle crossbeds (fig. 29). Figure 28 shows the dip directions of crossbeds in the Corbin, which were averaged 

by the use of the trignometric methods suggested by 

Curray (1956). All areas of the outcrop belt were not 

sampled, but the data indicate that the current directions generally parallel the long axis of the outcrop belt 

of the Corbin. This parallelism is most apparent in the
G36 CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE GEOLOGY OF KENTUCKY

B

Sandstone

B'

Approximate topographic surface

Lily coal bed 

Corbin pinches out

Breathitt Formation

^{Arbitrary datum)

Pennington Formation

^xif-Livingston Conglomerate Member 

Newman Limestone

(Arbitrary datum)

B

?

B'

QUADRANGLE INDEX

METERS FEET 

60 T 200

100

C'

10 MILES

10 KILOMETERS

Morris ,' 

coal bed H

,-' Breathitt

Formation

(Arbitrary datum)

Approximate topographic surface,

__ js. - - — - *

^^^?£^<iffi^

Jellico 

coal bed

Blue Gem 

coal bed

West edge of 

Rockcastle

^Arbitrary datum)

Breathitt 

^ndstorie^^^:::?:^^^

Formation

^£$$^^

Beaver Creek coal bed 

vandstone ———.Coa| bed

Bangor and Hartselle Formations

FIGURE 25.—Cross sections showing the relation of quartzose 

sandstone and conglomeratic-sandstone units in the lower part of 

the Pennsylvanian sequence near the west edge of the Cumberland Plateau in eastern Kentucky. All Pennsylvanian strata except the Livingston Conglomerate, Rockcastle Conglomerate,

C'

QUADRANGLE INDEX

and the Corbin Sandstone Members of the Lee Formation are assigned to the Breathitt formation. Unlabeled strata consist of 

shale, siltstone, and subgraywacke. See figure 17 for location of 

sections; figure 1 shows quadrangle location.
SANDSTONE UNITS IN EASTERN KENTUCKY G37

FIGURE 26.—Cliffs of the Corbin Sandstone Member of the Lee Formation north of Beattyville, Ky., in Natural Bridge State Park on Kentucky State Highway 11.

southern part of the outcrop belt in which the currents 

inferred from the dip directions of crossbeds are subparallel to the southeastern depositional edge of the 

member. In the northern part of the outcrop belt, the 

eastern continuation of the Corbin is supported by the 

inferred current directions (fig. 28) as well as thickness 

contours (fig. 27).

The Corbin Sandstone Member was interpreted by 

Wanless (1975a, table 2, p. 28) as being equivalent to 

the Rockcastle Sandstone of the Crab Orchard Mountains Group in Tennessee. As shown in the foregoing 

discussion, the Rockcastle Conglomerate Member of 

the Lee Formation underlies the Corbin and is partly 

or wholly equivalent to the Rockcastle Sandstone in 

Tennessee. Mapping in Kentucky has also shown that 

the Corbin extends into northeastern Kentucky where 

it lies stratigraphically above the Olive Hill clay bed 

and its equivalent, the Sciotoville clay member of the 

Pottsville Formation in Ohio. The Corbin is, therefore, 

probably equivalent to the Massillon sandstone member 

of the Pottsville in Ohio which overlies the Sciotoville 

and is also equivalent to the Lower Connoquenessing

sandstone member of the Pottsville in western Pennsylvania. These stratigraphic relations supported by 

analyses of plant spores in coal beds underlying the 

Corbin (Rice, 1978) show that the Corbin is Middle 

Pennsylvanian in age.

GRAYSON SANDSTONE BED OF 

WHITTINGTON AND FERM

The name Grayson was given to a thin ganister like 

sandstone bed that directly underlies the Wolf Creek or 

Bruin coal bed near Grayson in northeastern Kentucky. 

In its type area, the sandstone is very fine grained, 

quartzose, slightly micaceous, bioturbated and contains 

stigmarian rootlets. Near Grayson, the bed is only 0 to 

5 ft thick and forms a conspicuous minor ledge that on 

weathering yields blocky float.

The Grayson crops out mainly in Carter County and 

adjacent parts of Greenup and Elliott Counties (figs. 3 

and 17). The bed was assigned to the Breathitt Formation by Whittington and Ferm (1967), but west of 

Grayson, where the unit is as much as 70 ft thick, it
G38 CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE GEOLOGY OF KENTUCKY

AshlandO

83° 00'

0 5 ID 15 20 MILES

0 5 10 15 20 25 30 KILOMETERS

_ KENTUCKY; 

TENNESSEE

Paintsville
SANDSTONE UNITS IN EASTERN KENTUCKY G39

was assigned by D^Laney and Englund (1973) to the 

Lee Formation. The thicker part of the Grayson appears to have been deposited in a southwesterly trending 4-mi-wide channel that locally has been scoured into 

Mississippian shale (Englund and Windolph, 1975). 

Sandstone in the channel is quartzose, which is very 

fine to coarse grained, pebbly to conglomeratic, and has 

well-rounded quartz pebbles as much as 0.5 in. in diameter. As is characteristic of the Grayson, the upper surface of the channel facies is rooted. Where the Grayson 

outcrop belt overlaps the Corbin Sandstone Member, 

the Grayson lies from a few feet to as much as 80 ft 

above the Corbin.

ENVIRONMENT OF DEPOSITION

OF SANDSTONE UNITS 

IN THE LEE FORMATION

Sandstone units of the Lee Formation are characteristically quartz rich and range from more than 90 percent to more than 99 percent quartz. The sandstone 

units are relatively coarse grained, commonly pebbly, 

and in places conglomeratic. They are southwest-trending linear or broadly lobate bodies. By the use of these 

characteristics, some geologists (Ferm, 1974; Home 

and others, 1974; Miller, 1974; Hayes and Connor, 1982) 

inferred that the sandstone units were deposited in a 

beach or barrier-bar environment with land to the 

southeast and sea to the northwest. These workers 

further suggested that the elastics in the Lee deposits 

were transported into nearshore environments by westward- or northwestward-flowing streams that drain 

emerging land areas in the central Appalachians parallel to and southeast of the trough of the Appalachian 

basin. In the high energy nearshore environments, 

wave action could have eliminated the less stable minerals and finer clastic fractions (Home, 1979). The general southwestward current direction implied by crossbedding in the Lee sandstone units was ascribed to 

longshore currents and southwestward migration of 

tidal channels.

This shoreline model of deposition is, however, only 

possibly applicable to sandstone units that are associated with marine rocks. Such an association in the 

Lee Formation is true only of the lower tongues in the 

eastern outcrops, the Pinnacle Overlook, Chadwell, and 

White Rocks Sandstone Members of the Lee; in the 

western outcrops, the Carter Caves Sandstone is a

Lee-type sandstone also associated with marine rocks. 

These sandstone units are interbedded with siltstone 

and shale that contain marine fossils. Furthermore, 

they have characteristics of marine deposition, such as 

transitional as well as disconformable bases and a dominance of ripple-bedding and bimodal crossbedding (BeMent, 1976). The environments of deposition of these 

members, however, are uncertain, for the distribution 

and geometry of these sandstone units are very poorly 

known. The Carter Caves Sandstone (Mississippian) in 

northeastern Kentucky has been attributed to deposition in a beach or barrier bar by Ferm and others 

(1971), in an off shore bar by Englund and Windolph 

(1971), and in a tidal channel by Ettensohn (1977).

Many geologists postulate a fluvial or continental environment for the Pennsylvanian Lee-type sandstones 

in the central Appalachian and Eastern Interior basins. 

Among the definitive characteristics are the following: 

the disconformable bases and multistory nature of the 

sandstones, the fining upward of grain size, the dominance of planar and trough crossbedding, and the common occurrence of coalified plant remains and impressions of plants in the deposits (Fuller, 1955; Mrakovich, 

1969; Englund, 1968, p. 17; BeMent, 1976; Wixted, 

1977; Houseknecht, 1978; Pryor and Potter, 1979). Most 

studies recognize the differences between the moderately well sorted quartzose sandstones of the Lee members and the poorly sorted clayey and silty sandstones 

of the enclosing units and note that the Lee sandstone 

is much coarser, locally contains abundant quartz pebbles, and thus could not have been derived from the enclosing units. The two types of sandstones seem to have 

been derived from different sources. The quartz grains 

and pebbles of the quartzose sandstone units are commonly well rounded. Overgrowths on the rounded 

quartz grains, indicative of previous cycles of deposition, suggest they were derived from pre-existing unmetamorphosed sediments from which the less stable 

minerals had been removed by weathering (Siever and 

Potter, 1956, p. 328). The finer-grained subgraywackes, 

on the other hand, contain angular to sub-rounded 

grains of quartz and feldspar, conspicuous mica, and 

small fragments of schist and igneous rocks, which 

suggest that the sediments were derived from a low- to 

medium-grade metamorphic terrane (Houseknecht, 

1978, p. 159). Those and other petrographic differences 

of the two types of sandstone were combined with regional paleocurrent studies in Pennsylvania by Meckel

FIGURE 27.—Generalized thickness contours of the Corbin Sandstone Member of the Lee Formation. Contours dashed where conjectural. Contour interval 50 ft. The Corbin is at least 180 ft thick in the eastern outcrop areas just west of Paintsville, but insufficient data do not 

allow thickness contours to be drawn.
G40 CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE GEOLOGY OF KENTUCKY

Ashland

83°00'

Crossbed dip-directions 

in northern part of 

outcrop

Corbin eroded38°00'>

Richmond

Corbin eroded

37°30'

Somerset

37°00'

\

\

Z—Cc

/ t

/I

~- AV

r\ j

rCorbin covered

Prestonsburg

NORTHERN OUTCROP

SOUTHERN OUTCROP

or bin pinchout

100% 5o% Arrow ^presents average dip direction of 

8 to 10 crossbeds in quarter of 

quadrangle. Length of arrow is 

proportional to consistency of dip 

directions

S-— Corbin covered

Williamsburg

Corbin pinchout 

KENTUCKY

TENNESSEE

10 15 20 MILES

0 5 10 15 20 25 30 KILOMETERS

,rea of figure 28

Crossbed dip-directions 

in southern part of 

outcrop
SANDSTONE UNITS IN EASTERN KENTUCKY G41

(1970, p. 60, table 2), who suggested that the finergrained subgraywacke was derived from a tectonic 

source area to the southeast and the coarser grained 

quartzose sandstone from a cratonic source area to the 

north and northeast.

PALEOGEOGRAPHY

In Late Mississippian time, uplift to the east and 

southeast in the Appalachian erogenic belt exposed 

older Paleozoic deposits of quartzose sandstone and 

conglomerate to erosion. Streams periodically transported those coarse elastics across extensive tidal flats 

into shallow marine environments where they were reworked by waves and marine currents and were deposited as the Pinnacle Overlook, Chadwell, and White 

Rocks Sandstone Members of the Lee Formation. At 

the same time, regional uplift caused thinning of 

sedimentary units toward the north in northern Kentucky and adjacent areas; local erosion as well as probable nondeposition was responsible for the northward 

truncation of some Upper Mississippian units. As uplift 

continued, a large area in North America became emergent as is indicated by the occurrence of entrenched 

Lower Pennsylvanian fluvial channel deposits in the 

Mississippian strata in both the Appalachian and Eastern Interior basins. Regional current data and petrographic studies of basal Pennsylvanian sandstone units 

by Potter and Siever (1956a) have shown that the Late 

Mississippian-Early Pennsylvanian paleoslope was toward the south-southwest in much of the north-central 

and northeastern United States and that streams in 

Early Pennsylvanian time carried sediment from as far 

as the eastern portions of the Canadian Shield and 

northern Appalachians into and beyond the Eastern Interior basin. Although much of that land surface has 

been destroyed by post-Paleozoic erosion, a large part 

of it has been preserved beneath the overlying Pennsylvanian strata.

The outcrop limits of the Pennsylvanian rocks and 

the limits of underlying Mississippian carbonate formations in the central part of the Appalachian basin and 

in part of the Kentucky portion of the Eastern Interior 

basin are shown in figure 30. The underlying carbonate 

formations are Upper Mississippian in age and include 

strata of the Newman Limestone in Kentucky, the 

Maxville Limestone in Ohio, and the Greenbrier Limestone in Virginia and West Virginia; in south-central and 

western Kentucky equivalent strata consist largely of

FIGURE 29.—Trough sets of crossbeds in the Corbin Sandstone 

Member of the Lee Formation near Beattyville, Ky.

the St. Louis and St. Genevieve Limestones. These 

limestone units are continuous and are the most resistant units in the Mississippian section along the northwestern flank of the Appalachian basin. The limestone 

units were tilted southeastward toward the subsiding 

Appalachian basin near the end of Mississippian time 

and formed a northwest-facing escarpment or cuesta 

that extended from western Pennsylvania into central 

Kentucky (fig. 30). This cuesta was a significant physiographic feature in the landscape in Late Mississippian 

and Early Pennsylvanian time, for along much of its 

length it was the drainage divide between the Appalachian and Eastern Interior basins.

Figure 31 shows the location of some Pennsylvanian 

channel-fill deposits in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and western 

Kentucky. Areas of lag gravels derived from conglomeratic channel-fill deposits of Pennsylvanian age 

that rest on strata of Mississippian age on hilltops in 

central Kentucky are also shown. Inferred current directions, indicated by arrows, are generalized from the 

work of Meckel (1967) for the Olean Conglomerate 

Member of the Pottsville Formation in Pennsylvania, 

from Coogan and others (1974) for the Sharon outcrops 

in northern Ohio, from Couchot (1972) for outcrops of 

the Sharon Member of the Pottsville Formation in 

southern Ohio, and from Pryor and Potter (1979) for

FIGURE 28.—Outcrop pattern and resultants of dip-directions of crossbeds of the Corbin Sandstone Member of the Lee Formation. Resultants, 

shown by arrows, are vector sums of 5 or more dip directions in one-quarter of a quadrangle, calculated using the trignometric methods 

suggested by Curray (1956). Rose diagrams indicate frequency distribution and total number of measurements.
G42

87° 86'

CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE GEOLOGY OF KENTUCKY

85° 84° 83° 82°

EXPLANATION

Pennsylvania rocks

Mississippiari carbonate rocks— 

Greenbriex Limestone and 

equivalent^

TENNESSEE

38°

37

FIGURE 30.—Map of Kentucky, Ohio, West Virginia, and part of Virginia showing limits of outcrop of Pennsylvanian rocks and limits 

of distribution of Upper Mississippian carbonates (the Newman, 

Maxville, and Greenbrier Limestones). Subsurface data mainly 

from Craig, Connor, and others (1979, pi. 6B; also Flowers [1956]

for West Virginia and Lamborn [1945] for Ohio). Hachured line 

indicates the approximate position in Late Mississippian to Early 

Pennsylvanian time of an escarpment or cuesta capped by Upper 

Mississippian carbonate units.

the outcrops of the Caseyville Formation in the 

Brownsville paleovalley in western Kentucky. Coarse 

elastics in the Brownsville paleochannel were undoubtedly derived from Appalachian sources (Pryor and Potter, 1979, p. 59). In central Kentucky, lag gravels capping hilltops were derived from Pennsylvanian conglomerate units (fig. 31). These gravels were interpreted by Miller (1910) and Burroughs (1923) to be a residual lag from Lower Pennsylvanian channel deposits 

which were continuous across the Cincinnati Arch into 

western Kentucky. Although areas of channel deposits 

in figure 31 are widely separated, this report postulates 

that they were parts of a southwest-flowing drainage 

system on the northwest side of the Mississippian carbonate cuesta.

The history of the quartzose sandstone deposits characteristic of the Pennsylvanian portion of the Lee Formation began in Late Mississippian time with the cutting of channels by largely southwest-trending drainage 

systems. In Middle Pennsylvanian time, the last remnants of the channels and their fills were buried by 

finer grained sediments from what was probably more 

easterly or southeasterly sources. A sketch of the 

Pennsylvanian depositional events recorded by the 

rocks of the Lee Formation follows.

Stage 1.—During stage 1, the sub-Pennsylvanian 

drainage pattern in Kentucky and the central Appalachian basin was established. Figure 32 is a schematic 

synthesis of inferred stream channels at the end of Mississippian time. Streams radiated away from the Jes-
SANDSTONE UNITS IN EASTERN KENTUCKY G43

samine Dome of the Cincinnati Arch in northern Kentucky. The master river connecting the Sharon and 

Brownsville paleovalleys appears to have been deflected southward around the dome, and as suggested 

by the nearby lag gravels derived from basal Pennsylvanian conglomerates, it probably eroded through the 

Cincinnati Arch and the carbonate cuesta along the 

down-thrown south side of the east-west trending 

Brumfield fault zone (fig. 7) in south-central Kentucky. 

North-flowing tributaries to the Sharon system in Ohio 

near the West Virginia border are indicated by the subsurface studies of Flowers (1956). A large paleovalley in 

the easternmost part of Kentucky and the presence of 

thick sandstone units in the basal Pennsylvanian of adiacent West Virginia suggest a major river system 

flowed southwestward across the central part of West

Virginia and through eastern Kentucky. To the southeast of the paleovalley, studies by Englund (1974) and 

Miller (1974) indicate that the earliest Pennsylvanian 

sediments were deposited northwest- to westward in 

several merging deltaic lobes.

Stage 2.—Uplift of the craton and mountain building 

in the Appalachian orogenic belt, which began in Late 

Mississippian time and continued into Pennsylvanian 

time, resulted in an increase in erosion. In the northern 

part of the belt, outcrops of older Paleozoic sedimentary and metamorphic rocks yielded quartz sand and 

gravel that were carried to the southwest by rivers 

that drained the region. As the volume of sediments increased, the streams filled their channels, became 

braided, and spread out across their flood plains. 

Streams periodically breached gaps in the Mississippian

87° 85° 83° 82° 81° 79° 78° 77°

42° - LAKE

MICHIGAN'

Outcrops of Oleon 

Conglomerate 

Member

EXPLANATION

/~?^~~- ^—>\

/ )

X^ / Extent of Pennsylvanian rocks

Extent of Mississippian 

carbonate rocks

Outcrop of Sharon, 

Conglomerate 

Member

Brownsville 

paleochannel I

Outcrops ofiSharon 

Conglomerate 

Member

Areas in which 

Pennsylvanian lag 

gravels are reported

100 MILES 

I

100 KILOMETERS

FIGURE 31.—Pennsylvanian sandstone- and conglomerate-filled channels cut into Mississippian strata in Ohio, Pennsylvania (Olean and Sharon 

Conglomerate Members), and western Kentucky (Caseyville Formation). Areas of lag gravels derived from conglomerate units of Pennsylvanian age are also shown.
G44

42°-

CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE GEOLOGY OF KENTUCKY

85° 84° 83° 82° 81°

41° -

40'

EXPLANATION

Pennsylvanian rocks

Mississippian carbonate rocks— 

Greenbrier Limestone and 

equivalents

Jessamine 

Dome

FIGURE 32.—Map of Kentucky, Ohio, West Virginia, and parts of adjacent states showing the inferred Late Mississippian-Early Pennsylvanian drainage system in which channel-fill quartzose sandstone and conglomerate were deposited. (Compare data shown in figures 4, 13, 

and 31).

carbonate cuesta in at least five places, resulting in the 

deepening of channels of some streams on the back or 

southeast side of the cuesta (fig. 33).

East of Kentucky, the Appalachian uplift exposed 

mostly fine-grained metamorphic rocks whose detritus 

of quartz, feldspar, mica, and rock fragments was 

transported westward and northwestward into the 

southeastern margin of the subsiding Appalachian 

basin. The axis of the Appalachian basin, where the 

greatest subsidence took place in Early Pennsylvanian 

time, lay southeast of the present outcrop area and has 

been eroded away. Deposition of fine-grained elastics 

into and across the basin was apparently continuous 

from latest Mississippian to earliest Pennsylvanian 

time. This resulted in an intertonguing of lithologies 

and apparent conformability of strata across the Mississippian-Pennsylvanian systemic boundary in that area 

(Englund, 1974). Strata representing those earliest 

Pennsylvanian deposits belong to the Pocahontas Formation which crops out in southeastern West Virginia 

and southwestern Virginia (fig. 33). The Pocahontas 

thins to the northwest and may locally onlap older Mississippian rocks in that direction. Near the end of this 

stage, distal deposits of the Pocahontas were truncated 

by the southwest-flowing river in West Virginia and 

Kentucky that began the deposition of the Middlesboro 

Member of the Lee Formation.

Stage 3.—During stage 3, aggradation and floods in 

the Sharon-Brownsville valley led to significant changes 

in the drainage system. The breaching of the drainage 

divide between the Appalachian and Eastern Interior 

basins (fig. 33) resulted in major stream captures (fig.
SANDSTONE UNITS IN EASTERN KENTUCKY G45

34). Upwarping of the Cincinnati and Waverly Arches 

(see fig. 7) or regional subsidence may have contributed 

to the changes in the stream pattern.

In south-central Kentucky, floods carried sand and 

gravel from the Sharon-Brownsville river system 

across the former uplands of the cuesta and through 

some of the low gap£ into streams draining into the Appalachian basin. The Livingston channel was widened 

and deepened by a stream whose headwaters captured 

the middle part of the Sharon-Brownsville river system. Reworking of gravels from the captured valley 

produced the thick zone of large pebbles in the upper 

part of the Livingston Conglomerate Member of the 

Lee Formation described by Wixted (1977, p. 50, fig. 

5).

In eastern Ohio, the Sharon drainage flowed south 

into central West Virginia and joined a major river

which flowed to the southwest. The water gap in the 

Mississippian cuesta near the Ohio-West Virginia border was widened and deepened. Flowers (1956, p. 2) 

shows this valley where it cuts into the Greenbrier 

Limestone to have a width of about 14 mi, a length of 

85 mi, and a depth of about 200 ft.

Stage b.—During stage 4, the major river channel in 

southeastern Kentucky, in part fed by the Sharon 

drainage (fig. 35), became filled with coarse elastics. 

Primary distributaries of a developing delta (shown by 

"1" on fig. 35) aggraded, and the river began to spread 

its sediment through braided distributaries (shown by 

"2" on fig. 35) across most of southeastern Kentucky.

Detritus from the Appalachian metamorphic-source 

area, although mainly deposited in the axial portions of 

the subsiding Appalachian basin, was being carried increasingly farther west and northwest by streams that

87°

42°

EXPLANATION

Pennsylvanian rocks

Mississippian carbonate rock 

Greenbrier Limestone and 

equivalents

Northwest Limit of 

Pocahontas strata

37°

FIGURE 33.—Map of Kentucky, Ohio, West Virginia, and parts of adjacent states showing breaching of the drainage divide between the Appalachian and Eastern Interior basins during Early Pennsylvanian time. Western limit of Pocahontas strata from Englund and Henry 

(written commun., 1980).
G46 CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE GEOLOGY OF KENTUCKY

at times became tributary to the southwest-flowing 

river. This merging of the two drainage systems gave 

rise to the lateral gradation and interlayering of 

quartzose sandstone with subgraywacke, siltstone, and 

shale in areas in southwestern Virginia and eastern 

Kentucky and to the deposition of the Hensley Member 

of the Lee Formation at the end of this stage. The 

facies relations of the deposits formed by the merging 

of the river systems are well illustrated by Miller (1974, 

p. 120, fig. 58). However, he interprets the quartzose 

sandstone facies of the Lee Formation, here as much as 

1,000 ft thick, as beach and barrier island deposits. Lagoons, tidal and delta swamps are inferred to lie to the 

southeast and the sea to the northwest (Miller, 1974, p. 

123, fig. 59). No marine deposits matching the scale of 

the inferred beaches and barrier islands are present in

the Lower Pennsylvanian rocks of Kentucky. On the 

contrary, the available stratigraphic data generally indicate terrestrial environments in areas lateral to and 

northwest of that studied by Miller. Merging of the two 

drainage systems appears to be also responsible for the 

progressive reduction of the percentage of monocrystalline quartz pebbles (from northern cratonic sources) to 

polycrystalline quartz pebbles (from eastern metamorphic sources) in Lee and equivalent rocks southwestward from West Virginia to Tennessee (BeMent, 1976, 

p. 111).

In south central Ohio, swamps formed along the flood 

plain of the beheaded Sharon-Brownsville River leading 

to the formation of the Sharon coal bed. A thin shale 

immediately above this coal bed contains brackish to 

marine fossils, showing that, as a result of subsidence,

87

EXPLANATION

Sites of major stream capture

Mississippian carbonate 

Greenbrier Limestone 

equivalent

100 KILOMETERS

37° »

FIGURE 34.—Map of Kentucky, Ohio, and West Virginia, and parts of adjacent states showing changes in the drainage pattern following major

stream captures in Early Pennsylvanian time.
87

SANDSTONE UNITS IN EASTERN KENTUCKY

83° 82° 81°

EXPLANATION

Extent of Pennsylvanian rocks

Extent of Mississippian carbonate rocks

FIGURE 35.—Map of Kentucky, Ohio, and parts of adjacent states 

showing westward migration of major distributaries accompanied 

by aggradation in eastern Kentucky in later Early Pennsylvanian 

time; original distributaries are indicated by "1"; later distributaries by "2". The distribution of an Early Pennsylvanian 

shallow marine transgression is shown by stippled pattern west 

of and along the western margin of the Appalachian basin. Three 

marine to brackish horizons of Early Pennsylvanian age have

been identified in parts of Virginia and West Virginia (Gordon 

and Henry, 1981); these are, with their location (shown by "X") 

and stratigraphic position: A, lower Pocahontas Formation (brackish water fauna); B, base of New River Formation (marine 

fauna); and C, middle New River Formation (marine fauna). The 

uppermost of those horizons east of Kentucky (C) may be about 

the same stratigraphic position as the marine unit shown by stippled pattern.

marine water from the west and southwest invaded 

parts of the river valley. Figure 35 shows the inferred 

extent of the marine transgression in parts of the Eastern Interior basin and the western part of the Appalachian basin. Brackish and marine water formed a 

shallow elongate bay that extended from near the edge 

of the Pottsville Escarpment in Tennessee to perhaps 

as far as 80 mi to the northeast in Kentucky as evidenced by a persistent marine zone in a coal and shale 

sequence in the Lower Pennsylvanian rocks below the

Rockcastle Conglomerate Member of the Lee Formation. The transgression of marine water northwest and 

southeast of the Mississippian carbonate cuesta ended 

transportation of coarse elastics from the area of the 

Cincinnati Arch into the Appalachian basin.

Stage 5.—During stage 5, the area west of the Sharon River in south-central Ohio and northeastern Kentucky was alluviated mostly with silt and clay which 

formed a broad swampy plain. The higher portions of 

the cuesta of Mississippian carbonates remained above
G48 CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE GEOLOGY OF KENTUCKY

the alluvial plain. The water gap on the Ohio-West 

Virginia border continued to channel the Sharon drainage into central West Virginia and then southwestward into eastern Kentucky where coarse elastics 

continued to be deposited.

Stage 6.—At the beginning of stage 6, a slight upwarping of the alluvial plain along the axis of the Waverly Arch west of the Sharon River in south-central 

Ohio and northeastern Kentucky brought about intense 

leaching and kaolinization of siltstone and shale underlying swampy areas. In the same area, iron that was 

leached from overlying sediments was locally deposited 

as in iron carbonate replacement at the top of the Newman Limestone.

During this stage, deposition of the Naese Sandstone 

Member (now exposed in the Cumberland overthrust

sheet) and its equivalent, the Rockcastle Conglomerate 

Member, on the southwestern margin of the Appalachian basin was completed. Source areas for these sediments northeast of West Virginia were either eliminated by regional subsidence or by masking deposits of 

the delta advancing from the east and southeast.

Stage 7.—During stage 7, there was renewed uplift 

near the headwaters of the Sharon drainage system, 

and the volume of coarse sediments and the size of 

streams were increased. In the area west of the Sharon 

drainage system, clay beds and overlying swamp deposits were locally dissected by rejuvenated streams. 

During this time, most of the Appalachian basin southeast of the cuesta of Mississippian carbonates was dominated by the delta extending westward and northwestward from the central Appalachian erogenic belt.

87°

EXPLANATION

Pennsylvanian rocks

•| Mississippian carbonate 

Greenbrier Limestone 

equivalents

100 KILOMETERS

38

37

FIGURE 36.—Map of Kentucky, Ohio, West Virginia, and parts of adjacent states showing configuration of the Sharon drainage system in

early Middle Pennsylvanian time.
SANDSTONE UNITS IN EASTERN KENTUCKY G49

Coarse elastics carried by the Sharon River into central 

West Virginia were diverted to the southwest along the 

Irving-Paint Creek and Kentucky River fault zones in 

Kentucky (fig. 36; see also fig. 7). Local marked differences of thickness of sandstone units on opposite sides 

of the faults indicate possible movements of the faults 

in Middle Pennsylvanian time (Short, 1978, p. 36).

Stage 8.—During stage 8, aggradation of streams in 

the northern and central Appalachian basin accompanied regional subsidence. As a result of uplift and increased erosion in its source area, the Sharon River 

again became braided and began to deposit broad 

sheets of pebbly sand and gravel. The Corbin 

Sandstone Member was deposited in Kentucky and the 

Massillon or Lower Connoquenessing equivalent 

sandstone members in Ohio and Pennsylvania. As regional subsidence continued in the central Appalachian 

basin, the Sharon-Corbin drainage system south of central Ohio was abandonded. The delta plain, which now 

extended westward across all of eastern Kentucky, was 

covered largely by swamps and lakes. The remnants of 

the Mississippian carbonate cuesta in northwestern 

West Virginia and northeastern Kentucky were buried 

beneath the apron of the delta. Continued subsidence 

led to the spread of marine water from the southwest 

across much of eastern Kentucky into West Virginia 

and was accompanied by deposition of a thin unnamed 

marine shale (Rice and Smith, 1980).

A brief renewal of the Sharon drainage system at a 

later time is indicated by the deposition of (the Grayson 

sandstone bed at the northernmost end of the Lee outcrop belt in northeastern Kentucky (fig. 17). The filling 

of the southwest-trending Grayson channel with quartzpebble sand and gravel concluded Lee deposition in 

eastern Kentucky.

PROBLEMS RELATED TO THE LEE FORMATION 

DESERVING FURTHER STUDY

Many interesting problems have arisen concerning 

the Lee Formation as a result of the mapping program. 

In some areas, mapping was completed before a regional stratigraphic framework was established and in other 

areas, members were incorrectly projected. Stratigraphic relations between the strata of the Lee Formation in the three outcrop belts were never clearly developed because subsurface studies were not generally 

included as part of the mapping program. Therefore, 

revision of the mapping done in the early part of the 

Kentucky mapping program on the basis of data developed in the later part of the program would be helpful. The following is a list of those major problems that 

could not be dealt with adequately in this summary because of insufficient data.

1. Lee-type sandstone units in the middle and upper 

parts of the Pennington Formation should be 

studied in Kentucky with regard to their stratigraphic position, thickness, and distribution, and 

should be related to formally named units. Many of 

these sandstone units are currently known only by 

names used informally by drillers. A study of these 

units should relate subsurface data to outcrop data 

along Pine and Cumberland Mountains so that petrology and sedimentary structures can be used for 

analyses of depositional environments and a better 

understanding of Upper Mississippian stratigraphy.

2. Similar studies of the members of the Lee Formation 

that are Mississippian in age, the Pinnacle Overlook, Chadwell, and White Rocks Members, should 

be conducted to determine their distributions, 

sources, and environments of deposition.

3. Extensive paleontological studies of marine units and 

coal beds and other plant-bearing strata should be 

conducted in the vicinity of the MississippianPennsylvanian systemic boundary to determine the 

relations of the two systems.

4. A more detailed study of the inferred basal Pennsylvanian channel deposits (fig. 32) is warranted to 

determine their morphology and confirm their 

character.

5. A direct comparison of the petrology of basal 

Pennsylvanian sandstone and conglomerate units 

should be made to relate clastic sources in different 

parts of the central Appalachian basin at the beginning of Pennsylvanian time. Vertical and horizontal 

petrographic variations that involve relative proportions of mono- and polycrystalline quartz grains 

and pebbles as well as heavy mineral suites should 

be related to sedimentary structures in order to 

determine clastic sources and the evolution of the 

Lee deposits.

6. The Middlesboro Member should be restudied in the 

surface and subsurface in order to resolve the 

nomenclatural problems along Pine Mountain. The 

existence of the paleovalleys indicated on the thickness map of the Middlesboro Member (fig. 13) 

should be verified—investigation of the paleovalley 

just west of Rocky Face fault on Pine Mountain 

should help determine the reasons for the large differences in thickness of both Upper Mississippian 

and Lower Pennsylvanian units on opposite sides 

of the fault and should help determine the age and 

stratigraphic position on Pine Mountain of 

sandstone member A in the Middlesboro North 

quadrangle (Englund and others, 1964) or the 

lower part of the Middlesboro(?) Member in the 

Kayjay quadrangle (Rice and Maughan, 1978).
G50 CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE GEOLOGY OF KENTUCKY

7. Insufficient thickness data for the Bee Rock and 

Naese Sandstone Members do not permit construction of separate isopach maps. These members are 

locally difficult to separate and may intertongue in 

a complex way with the overlying Hance Formation. Subsurface studies would help to clarify the 

identity of these members across Cumberland 

overthrust sheet and along Pine Mountain where 

they have been interpreted differently in the GQ 

reports.

8. The Rockcastle Conglomerate Member should be 

carefully delineated in Kentucky and its distribution, thickness, petrology, and sedimentary structures studied. The relation of this member of the 

Lee Formation to the Rockcastle Conglomerate of 

the Crab Orchard Mountains Group in Tennessee 

should be clarified and described.

9. The Corbin Sandstone Member should be carefully 

mapped from its type area to the Kentucky-Tennessee border so that it can be related to stratigraphic units mapped in Tennessee.

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G52 CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE GEOLOGY OF KENTUCKY

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