Bureau of Mines have been conducting mineral surveys of wilderness, wilderness study, and primitive areas. Studies and reports of all primitive areas have been completed. Areas officially designated as "wilderness," "wild," or "canoe" when the Act was passed were incorporated into the National Wilderness Preservation System, and some of them are presently being studied. For wilderness study areas, the mineral surveys constitute one aspect of the suitability studies. This report discusses the results of a mineral survey of some national forest lands in the Mill Creek, Mountain Lake, and Peters Mountain study areas, Virginia and West Virginia, that are being considered for wilderness designation (PL 93-622, January 3, 1975). The areas studied are in the Jefferson National Forest in Giles and Craig Counties, Va., and Monroe County, W.Va.

No abstract

The Knoxville 1°x2° quadrangle spans the Southern Blue Ridge physiographic province at its widest point from eastern Tennessee across western North Carolina to the northwest corner of South Carolina. The quadrangle also contains small parts of the Valley and Ridge province in Tennessee and the Piedmont province in North and South Carolina. Bedrock in the Valley and Ridge consists of unmetamorphosed, folded and thrust-faulted Paleozoic miogeoclinal sedimentary rocks ranging in age from Cambrian to Mississippian. The Blue Ridge is a complex of stacked thrust sheets divided into three parts: (1) a west flank underlain by rocks of the Late Proterozoic and Early Cambrian Chilhowee Group and slightly metamorphosed Late Proterozoic Ocoee Supergroup west of the Green brier fault; (2) a central part containing crystalline basement of Middle Proterozoic age (Grenville), Ocoee Supergroup rocks east of the Greenbrier fault, and rocks of the Murphy belt; and (3) an east flank containing the Helen, Tallulah Falls, and Richard Russell thrust sheets and the amphibolitic basement complex. All of the east flank thrust sheets contain polydeformed and metamorphosed sedimentary and igneous rocks of mostly Proterozoic age. The Blue Ridge is separated by the Brevard fault zone from a large area of rocks of the Inner Piedmont to the east, which contains the Six Mile thrust sheet and the Chauga-Walhalla thrust complex. All of these rocks are also polydeformed and metamorphosed sedimentary and igneous rocks. The Inner Piedmont rocks in this area occupy both the Piedmont and part of the Blue Ridge physiographic provinces. The intensity of deformation and metamorphism increases from west to east in the Blue Ridge. The west flank is mostly chlorite grade or relatively unmetamor phosed, and the central part of the Blue Ridge is mostly staurolite, garnet, or biotite grade, although sillimanite grade rocks occur along the eastern part of the central Blue Ridge in the vicinity of the leading edge of the Hayesvil Ie fault. The east flank of the Blue Ridge and much of the Inner Piedmont are at kyanite or silli manite grade of Manuscript approved for publication February 22, 1991. Description of the Area 3 Figure 3: Knoxville 1º x 2º quadrangle showing available 7 ½-min topographic maps. and Hiawassee Rivers, all tributaries of the Tennessee River. The Piedmont and eastern slopes of the Blue Ridge are drained to the east by many tributaries of the Catawba,

Kyanite-rich gneiss and schist are abundant in certain linear belts 3-8 miles wide and 20-40 miles long.

No abstract

Semiquantitative spectrographic analyses for 30 elements, atomic absorption analyses for gold, copper, lead, and zinc, colorimetric analyses for arsenic and molybdenum, and instrumental analyses for mercury on all or part of a sample suite of 788 rock and saprolite samples are reported here in detail. Complete chemical analyses are reported on 27 fresh to partly weathered rock samples. Most of the samples are saprolite derived from mica schist and gneiss, amphibolite, and quartzite, or vein quartz in saprolite. Samples of vein quartz generally contain some enclosing country rock. Samples are from roadcuts, surface and underground mine workings, and mine dumps. Locations are given by quadrangle and by latitude and longitude. Seventy-six percent of the samples from old mine areas and 13 percent from roadcuts contain gold at a limit of determination of 0.02 parts per million (ppm). Thirty-five percent of the mine samples and ninety percent of the roadcut samples that contain detectable gold have less than 0.2 ppm.

No abstract

No abstract