THE KENTUCKY MOUNTAINS TRANSPORTATION AND COMMERCE INTRODUCTION-EXTENT, BOUNDARIES, AND GEOGRAPHICAL Province. HE Appalachian Province, of which Eastern Ken- Appalachian tucky forms a part, is a dome-shaped elevation T Divisions. which extends in a northeast-southwest direction from Central New York to Southern Alabama. It is limited on the east by the Atlantic coastal plain, on the south by the Gulf coastal plain, and on the west by the Mississippi lowlands. Throughout its length, the province is made up of three physiographic divisions: 1, the Eastern, comprising Its Physiographic (a) the Appalachian Mountains, a system of many ridges separated by plateau-like valleys; (b) the Piedmont Plain, an elevated belt along the eastern base of the mountain chain: 2, the Central, a lowland belt, known as the "Great Valley," lying between the mountains and a western plateau, and consisting of a series of deep lengthwise valleys which are parallel with themselves and with the borders of the belt, * Known locally as the South Mountain of Pennsylvania, the Blue Ridge and Catoctin Mountain of Maryland and Virginia, the Great Smoky Mountains of Tennessee and North Carolina, and the Cohutta Mountains of Georgia. (U.S. Geological Survey, Geologic Atlas, Morristown Folio, Folio 27, 1896.) b The Coosa Valley of Georgia and Alabama, the Great Valley of East Tennessee and Virginia, the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, the Cumberland Valley of Maryland and Pennsylvania, and the Lebanon Valley of Northeastern Pennsylvania. (Ibid.) Appalachian their composition. The plateau belt the "Appalachian Coal Field." and which are separated by narrow ridges: 3, the Western, embracing (a) a plateau belt, known in Kentucky and Tennessee as the Cumberland Plateau, with an eastern escarpment facing the Appalachian Valley and for the most part regular, and a western escarpment deeply dissected and sinuous; (b) the interior lowlands, which include the lower rolling country of Kentucky, Ohio, and Tennessee. The Appalachian Mountains are, for the most part, composed of igneous and metamorphic rock belonging to the Archæan age and to an age unknown, but the divisions to the west are made up of sedimentary deposits more recent in origin, some of which contain coal seams. Dissection both to the east and the west, however, has worn away the coal-bearing rocks, so that the plateau belt, from northern Pennsylvania southward, rises as a coal field" above non-coal-bearing lowlands. With a total area of approximately 70,800 square miles, this field, 850 miles in length, is included within the limits of nine different States: Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama, Virginia, West Virginia, Ohio, Maryland, and Pennsylvania.' It is one a The coal fields of the United States are classified as anthracite and bituminous, for convenience in description and because of certain differences in the physical and chemical qualities of the coal. The anthracite deposits are confined almost exclusively to some 484 square miles of ridge land in Eastern Pennsylvania. The bituminous deposits are widely distributed, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, in a number of well-defined basins which contain various grades of coal from semi-anthracite to lignite, representing the stages in the formation of the mineral. Of these basins the Appalachian field ranks first not only in the character and quantity of its coal but in the magnitude of its production. (See map showing the coal fields of the United States, issued by the U. S. Geological Survey, with an explanation of the map by Marius R. Campbell. 1908.) |