THE MYSTERY CORNER: FINALIZING THE BEDROCK GEOLOGY MAP OF CANAAN VALLEY, WEST VIRGINIA

The area around Canaan Valley, West Virginia is a popular tourist destination. Home to a number of ski resorts, two very popular State Parks, a National Wildlife Refuge, and a National Wilderness Area, this scenic upland valley is located in the center of a gently folded anticline. Most of the bedrock geology for the four USGS topographic quadrangles comprising Canaan Valley was mapped by several people in the mid 1990s. However, one corner in the southeastern quadrangle remained unmapped for eight years. This “mystery corner” had relatively poor outcrop exposure and was more geologically complex than the rest of the mapped area. It lies east of the Allegheny Front, which marks the boundary between the relatively flat to gently-inclined rocks of the Appalachian Plateau physiographic province to the west, and the more intensely deformed rocks of the Valley and Ridge physiographic province to the east. A series of cross-strike traverses revealed steeply dipping, vertical, and overturned Ordovician through Devonian strata, but poor outcrop exposure made formation differentiation and contact placement difficult for some units. The final map was compiled in ArcMap^™, and the cross section was created with the aid of a free ArcMap^™ extension written by Evan Thoms at the USGS.