Lost River - Karst Information Portal

of rocks above the Ste. Genevieve including
the Aux Vases Shale, the Bethel Shale, and the
Beaver Bend Sandstone. While at the quarry, we
will discuss and see some New Albany shale gas
wells. The New Albany is an organic-rich shale
that is being developed throughout Indiana as
a natural gas reservoir.
Figure 24 shows the active mining areas as
well as the large unmined areas, mostly within
the large hill known as Pennington Chapel
Ridge. The quarry is on the extreme eastern edge
of the Crawford Upland, within an extreme
eastern outlier of the westward retreating
Crawford Upland/Chester Escarpment.
These outliers are sandstone-capped hills of
limestone that have been isolated from the
main upland area. Other outliers can be seen
sitting out on the Mitchell Plain like islands in
Geology Field Trip
a sea of sinkholes. The quarry has an excellent
vista overlooking the Crawford Upland to the
south and west, the Mitchell Plain as well as
the Indian Creek Valley to the near east, with
the Norman Upland far off to the east.
The stratigraphy at the quarry is summarized
in Figure 25 which is a cross-section of the existing
quarry from the top of the northern highwall
down to the lowest sump level near the southern
highwall. The Paoli appears to be about 38 feet
thick, and the Ste. Genevieve has an assigned
thickness of 175 feet, for a total of about 213
feet. The Ste. Genevieve/St. Louis contact has
not been pinpointed, and it is possible that the
Ste. Genevieve is only about 150 feet thick, with
the rest being in the St. Louis.
Figure 25 has vertical elevation control on
the top of the various benches with the Indiana
Figure 25. Corydon Stone and Asphalt stratigraphic section (provided by Corydon Stone).
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