STRATIGRAPHY AND STRUCTURE CASTLETON AREA VERMONT
STRATIGRAPHY AND STRUCTURE CASTLETON AREA VERMONT
STRATIGRAPHY AND STRUCTURE CASTLETON AREA VERMONT
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unit was called the Crown Point limestone, which at its type locality is<br />
the central unit of the standard Chazy group. Because the Burchards<br />
is separated from the typical Crown Point by an overthrust, a new<br />
name was proposed by Kay and Cady. The Burchards has been called<br />
the West Blue marble (Plate I) by Bain (1931, 1934), and it is exposed<br />
only at West Rutland.<br />
Description: The rock referred to the Burchards is a dark-gray and<br />
white finely banded marble with a few brown-weathering dolomite<br />
beds 5 inches to 4 feet thick. The only surface exposure is on the eastern<br />
edge of the West Rutland athletic field. Bain (1938, map) indicated<br />
that this exposure is continuous with the West Blue deposit in the main<br />
quarry section.<br />
Thickness: About 75 feet of Burchards is found at the surface, but the<br />
base is not exposed. In the quarries there may be 150 feet of Burchards,<br />
although thickening and thinning due to fiowage is the rule at West<br />
Rutland (Bain, 1931, p. 515-517). In adjacent areas the Burchards is<br />
150 feet thick (Cady, 1945, p. 549).<br />
Age: The Burchards limestone at West Rutland contains the large<br />
gastropod Maci urites magnus (Le Sueur). This fossil is diagnostic of the<br />
Crown Point stage of the Chazy throughout Vermont.<br />
Beldens Formation<br />
Name and distribution: The Beldens formation is exposed prominently<br />
in the fields southwest of Beldens, Vermont (Cady, 1945, p. 550). In<br />
the Castleton area the Beldens is found only in the area immediately<br />
surrounding the town of West Rutland. The Weybridge member of the<br />
Beldens (ibid.) may be present above the upper quarries on the eastern<br />
side of the West Rutland Valley. This rock is gray limestone with 3.-<br />
to 3/2-inch brown sandy laminae, some of which contain probable fossil<br />
fragments. As Plate I shows, the Main West Rutland marble, the Upper<br />
West Rutland marble, and the Westland marble deposits (Bain, 1931,<br />
p. 8; 1934, p. 126; 1938, map) are here correlated with the Beldens<br />
formation.<br />
Description: The Beldens contains 1- to 3-foot beds of buff-weathering<br />
dolomite with surfaces like "thread-scored beeswax" separated by<br />
various thicknesses of cream-colored and white-weathering white and<br />
blue-gray marble streaked with green. The green-banded marbles from<br />
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