24 Outstanding Field Trip Stops in the Carolinas and Beyond for Professionals and Teachers (Posters)

Monday, 2 April 2012
8:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Grand Ballroom

OUTSTANDING FIELD TRIP STOPS ALONG THE BLUE RIDGE FRONT: GEOLOGY IN THE BALD ROCK, CAESARS HEAD STATE PARK, AND CAMP GREENVILLE AREA, GREENVILLE COUNTY, SOUTH CAROLINA

Paper number: 24-3
Program: Theme Sessions
Time: 8:00 AM – 12:00 PM

Authors

Abstract

Several closely-spaced stops on the 2001 CGS Field Trip (South Carolina Geology, v. 43) were chosen to illustrate lithostratigraphic and structural relationships along the Blue Ridge Front in the Tugaloo terrane of the Inner Piedmont. These essentially permanent exposures in the Caesars Head State Park area, Greenville County, South Carolina are easily accessible along US Rt. 276 and county highways. They are spectacular for their exposures of important regional geologic relationships and their Piedmont landscape views. Regionally extensive Walhalla fold-nappe meta-igneous rocks (Ordovician Table Rock quartzo-feldspathic gneiss, formerly termed the Caesars Head granite) are structurally overlain by Six Mile thrust sheet rocks (Neoproterozoic-early Paleozoic age paragneisses, schists, amphibolites, and granitic rocks). The folded, ductile Neoacadian Seneca thrust fault contact exposed at Camp Greenville shows an associated duplex of interleaved hanging wall and footwall rocks. At Mulligan’s View, younger west-directed thrusts clearly displace the Seneca fault, and numerous overturned folds in Table Rock gneiss and amphibolite below the fault here are west-vergent due to regional Neoacadian tectonic activity. Typical Walhalla and Six Mile lithologies, the regional Seneca thrust, and younger faults are well exposed at these localities.

Several mineralogic varieties of Walhalla fold-nappe gneisses (450 Ma), pegmatites, and granitoids are exposed at Bald Rock on Heritage Trust land and at Caesars Head SP. Complex intrusive and fold relationships, ductile deformation features, joints, and sheeting joints are present at these locations. Visible from Bald Rock and Caesars Head are a mature, structurally-controlled landscape, the prominent Table Rock exfoliation dome, evidence of northward headward erosion along Matthews Creek, and a ridge at the foot of the Front possibly produced by Neotectonic faulting. At Bald Rock, numerous oval depressional features with raised centers in the rock may be the carvings of pre-historic inhabitants.