Abstract The Fall River Formation around the Black Hills uplift is pervasively fractured by layer-perpendicular joints. Systematic joints in the formation maintain consistent orientations over large areas and are commonly abutted by later-formed fractures, resulting in an orthogonal pattern. There are two major systematic sets, trending northeast and northwest, and one minor set trending north-south. The first two sets define two major fracture domains in the study area. The northwest joint set occupies a southern domain where it is the sole systematic fracture set. The northeast joint set is pervasively established throughout the northern domain, where northwest and north-south fracture sets are also developed in well-defined sectors. There is no genetic or spatial relationship between joint sets and local Laramide monoclines or folds of the region. Instead, the stratigraphic record indicates that joint development originated early in the lithification history of Fall River sandstones. Jointing occurred in response to local and regional extensional stresses that pervaded the northern and southern domains as a result of recurrent movement on basement faults that parallel the regional lineament system and surface structural zones throughout the region. Major uplift of the Black Hills and local fold development during Laramide time merely resulted in passive rotation of the early formed systematic and non-systematic joints.

The Blue Ridge and Great Valley of western Virginia are part of a detached master thrust sheet that extends through the central-southern Appalachian change of trend and has a root zone situated east of the Blue Ridge under the Piedmont. The mapped Pulaski fault and North Mountain fault crop out in the Great Valley as splay faults terminating in thrust tip anticlines and merge at depth with the buried master detachment floored primarily in Upper Ordovician Martinsburg Shales. Overall transposition of the thrust sheet from the root zone indicates that as much as 32 km (20 mi) of displacement may be translated westward into the Valley and Ridge proper and Allegheny Plateau as initial cover shortening above the Martinsburg Shale. Within the Great Valley and into the Roanoke recess at the juncture of the central and southern Appalachians, much of the cover shortening of this master sheet is accommodated by the Pulaski and North Mountain faults. From northeast to southwest, movement on the outcropping and buried master segment of the North Mountain fault decreases, and the surface fault terminates in southern Rockbridge County. Displacement on the Pulaski fault increases from northeast to southwest, and we infer that it assumes the decreasing displacement on the outcropping and buried segments of the North Mountain fault by displacement transfer.

Abstract The Browns Mountain section is located on the Marlinton and Minnehaha Springs 7½-minute quadrangles, along West Virginia 39 between Huntersville and Minnehaha Springs, Pocahontas County, West Virginia (Fig. 1). All stops along the section are adjacent to, or a short walk from, the main road and are easily accessible by bus or automobile.