GROUND WATER IN NORTH-CENTRAL TENNESSEE

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Stratigraphic section for north-central Tennessee
Water-bearing properties
Character of strata
Thickness
(feet)
Correlation Formation
Series
System
Possibly a potential source of ground water
locally, provided development is made practicable
by flood control.
Variable.
Alluvium.
Recent.
Quaternary.
Drained In large part, but probably will yield
supplies of household magnitude.
Variable.
High-terrace gravel.
Miocene (?)
or
Pliocene (?).
Tertiary (?).
More or less completely drained.
10.
Eutaw formation.
Upper Cretaceous.
Probably drained in large part, although some
facies should be excellent water bearers if
below the water table; probably will yield
moderate supplies locally.
30(?).
Tuscaloosa formation.
Yields large quantity of ground water to solution-channel
springs and to wells that reach
the bottom of the zone of weathering.
Gravel, sand, and silt composing flood plains of
master rivers and of the larger secondary
streams. Pebbles are mostly rounded fragments
of chert from Mississippian limestones
and chert and quartzlte from Pennsylvanian
conglomerates.
Rounded to subangular gravel, sand, and silt on
river terraces, locally several hundred feet
above present stream beds; poorly assorted at
many localities.
Red micaceous sand with fossilized wood and
interstratifled layers of white clay. Known
only in small remnant areas alo .g the divide
between the Tennessee and Cumberland
Rivers in northwestern part of the region.
Gravel derived largely from chert of Mississippian
limestones with a minor portion of sand
and clay. Known only in isolated areas on the
Highland Rim Plateau in the vicinity of the
Tennessee River.
Massive and medium-bedded fine-grained gray
to blue limestone; cherty and moderately fossttiferous;
weathers to a bright-red clay with
many rounded fragments of chert.
Coarsely crystalline gray to blue heavy-bedded
cherty limestone, shale, and calcareous sandstone;
highly fossiliferous; weathers to brickred
clayey soil with many chert fragme-its.
Siliceous shale, chert, fllat, cherty crinoidal limestone,
and calcareous sandstone of extremely
variable character, progressively more argillaceous
from northwest to southeast.
Coarsely crystalline white to gray crinoidal limestone
in layers 12 to 18 inches thick separated
by thin bands of green and blue shale, locally
massive; cross-bedding is characteristic at many
places.
110-140.
St. Louis limestone.
Similar to St. Louis limestone under like conditions
of topography and physiographic
history.
100.
Warsaw formation.
Very cherty facies supply springs of moderate
size; calcareous sandstone supplies seepage
springs in zone of weathering; earthy facies
yield little water.
90-275.
Fort Payne formation.
Mississippian.
Carboniferous.
Not known.
0-55.
New Providence shale.