DIGITAL GEOLOGIC MAP OF THE SOUTHERN APPALACHIAN BLUE RIDGE AND ADJACENT VALLEY AND RIDGE IN SOUTHEAST TENNESSEE, SOUTHWEST NORTH CAROLINA, AND NORTHERN GEORGIA

A new georegistered 100K-scale digital geologic map of the Blue Ridge (BR) in SE TN, W NC, and N GA has been compiled in Adobe Illustrator™. Recent and existing detailed (1:24,000 and 1:12,000 scale) mapping from NE GA, W NC, SE TN and the Great Smoky Mountains National Park (GSMNP) and new geochemical and geochronologic data are incorporated into the map. The goal in compiling this map was to depict configurations of as many contacts as possible as accurately as current knowledge permits so that the interpretation of contacts and rock units may change in the future but many contact geometries will not change.

Earlier problems between faults and rock units in and SW of the GSMNP appear resolved with detailed mapping in and near the remote Kilmer–Slickrock Wilderness. Two central BR terranes of distal Laurentian margin rocks, Cowrock (lower Hayesville–Soque River thrust sheet) and Cartoogechaye (upper, Hayesville–Chunky Gal Mtn/Shope fork–Soque River thrust sheet) are completely shown, along with the antiformal Dahlonega gold belt (lowest thrust sheet) from near Dahlonega, GA into NC and its northern end in the Great Balsam Mountains window. The Dahlonega gold belt is flanked to the W by the Taconian or Neoacadian(?) Soque River (–Hayesville) fault and to the E by the Alleghanian dextral Chattahoochee–Holland Mountain fault, whose timing is delimited by the truncated 335 Ma Rabun pluton. The Rabun pluton is the westernmost known Alleghanian pluton in the orogen. The Cartoogechaye terrane terminates to the NE against the southern end of the main BR anticlinorium that exposes a variety of Grenvillian and older basement units.