Chattanooga Paper - The Geology and Mineral Resources of Sesquachee Valley, Tennessee

SEQUACHEE Valley includes portions of the counties of Marion, Sequachee, Bledsoe and Cumberland. It extends in a general direction parallel with the Great Valley of East Tennessee, some 75 miles northward from the Alabama state line. It is separated from the Valley of East Tennessee by a mountain arm about a dozen miles wide, known as Wallen's or Walden's Ridge. The genesis of the valley, geologically speaking, is simple. It is an erosion-valley along the axis of an anticlinal. The point of the wedge remains in a row of low "saw-tooth" hills, running up the center of the valley. These hills are of Lower Silurian age, and consist of Trenton limestone, covered and protected in some measure by chert. Walls of Carboniferous age form the inclosing mountains on either side; whilst a magnificent arch of Hudson River, Niagara, Hamilton and Subcarboniferous strata closes the valley at the