Abstract: Structural Geology of Smoke Holes Area, Valley and Ridge, West Virginia--Exposed Model for Complex Subsurface Structures

Roy S. Sites, Russell L. Wheeler

Exceptional exposure in the Smoke Holes in the Valley and Ridge province of West Virginia reveals the interior of the allochthonous Cave Mountain anticline, which has overridden preexisting structures along the southeast-dipping Cave Mountain thrust and thus has caused tighter folds, splay thrusts, and refolded folds. The Smoke Holes serves as a surface model of complex subsurface structures suspected or shown by seismic work, and thus can aid in petroleum exploration for complex structural traps within the Central Appalachians. The Cave Mountain anticline trends northeast, is asymmetric to slightly overturned to the northwest, involves Upper Ordovician through Lower Devonian rocks, and is thrust against the southeast flank of the Wills Mountain anticline. The northwest l mb of the Cave Mountain anticline is a highly sheared zone of chevron folds and subparallel, southeast-dipping, high-angle, listric, reverse faults. These faults may be splays from a sole thrust within the Ordovician Reedsville Formation. In the center of the Smoke Holes, the Cave Mountain thrust shows a surface stratigraphic displacement of 1,900 ft (579 m) and has contributed to the rotation of a northwest-dipping backthrust in the core of the Cave Mountain anticline. Local cross faults show a maximum 100 ft (30 m) of strike slip. The Cave Mountain anticline culminates in the center of the area and divides at the northeastern end, up section across the Lower Devonian interval, into several plunging folds. Both the northeastern and southwestern ends of the Smoke Holes are bounded by maj r, cross-strike structural lineaments: the Petersburg lineament on the northeast and an extension of the Parsons lineament on the southwest.

AAPG Search and Discovery Article #90968©1977 AAPG-SEPM Annual Convention and Exhibition, Washington, DC