Excerpted from
Mineral
Resources of the
Appalachian
Region
By THE U. S. GEOLOGICAL SURVEY and THE U. S. BUREAU OF MINES
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GEOLOGICAL SURVEY PROFESSIONAL PAPER 580
A compilation of information on the
mineral resources, mineral industry,
and geology of the Appalachian Region
Sylacauga Marble Belt
Beds of pure-white to cream-colored marble, in places streaked
or clouded, crop out in a narrow northeast-trending belt called the Sylacauga
marble belt, about 35 miles long and ranging from 1/2 to 1 1/2 miles wide in
east-central Alabama (fig 60). According to Prouty (1916, p. 46), the
belt is bordered on the southeast by slate and phyllite of the Talladega Slate
but is separated from these rocks by a thrust fault. The belt is bounded
by the Knox Group along most of its northeastern border. Prouty (1916, p.
48) stated that the marble is the metamorphosed equivalent of limestone units
ranging in age from Cambrian through Silurian, and include the Beekmantown and
Chickamauga Limestones.
The thickest deposits of marble occur toward the central and
southwestern parts of the belt. Various quarries in the vicinity of
Sylacauga (loc. 17), the area of chief development, show the marble to be at
least 200 feet thick. Jones (1926, p. 50) reported that some quarries
have produced stone more or less continuously since the Civil War. The
marble is a fine-grained nearly pure calcite. It takes a high brilliant
polish, and is ideally suited for architectural and ornamental purposes; some
is of statuary grade.
The deposits are deeply weathered, however, and laced with a large number of fractures, faults, and shear zones; the size of sound blocks that can be quarried is therefore limited. According to Jones (1926, p. 50), less than half the volume of stone quarried can be used as dimension stone, but all the broken and crushed material is used for various purposes such as terrazzo, furnace flux, and agriculture lime.
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