The Old Kentucky River system was a major contributor to the Teays River, draining southwestern Ohio and much of eastern Kentucky. The trunk river flowed northward from southeastern Kentucky throughout Frankfort and Carrollton, and then past Cincinnati and Dayton, joining the Teays River near Springfield, Ohio. North of the glacial boundary, which lies along the modern Ohio River, the course of the Old Kentucky River has been modified, and is today largely buried by drift. Although dissection is extensive to the south, there are many remnants of this entrenched and broadly meandering Teays-age valley system and of its sub-upland predecessors. These valleys contain areas of upward-fining, deeply weathered gravel, composed mainly of rounded quartz, chert, and silicified limestone pebbles derived from the headwaters of the system. Modern rivers have been entrenched 30 to 100 m below the Old Kentucky River valley and its main tributaries, the Old Licking and South Fork. The Old Kentucky River system was severed from the Teays when glaciation dammed its downstream reaches, forcing a reversal in flow direction between its junction with the Teays in west-central Ohio and Carrollton, Kentucky, and causing westward overflow into the Old Ohio River system. Piracy by the Old Ohio may also have contributed to the integration of the Old Kentucky and Old Ohio River basins. Ponded sediment is present in some of the now-abandoned valley remnants east of Cincinnati. As a result of glacial damming, the headwaters of the Teays River in southeastern Ohio and West Virginia overflowed westward across the Manchester divide into the Old Kentucky River drainage basin. All of these events led to establishment of the modern Ohio River system.

ABSTRACT Pleistocene glacial and interglacial episodes had a profound influence on erosion, sediment transport, and topographic expression in the Midwestern United States. Northern Kentucky hosts a variety of fluvial and glacial features that record these Quaternary advances and retreats of the Laurentide ice sheet. This field trip highlights the major glacial and interglacial episodes of the Pleistocene, including the Pliocene–Early Pleistocene Teays drainage system, the Early–Middle Pleistocene pre–Illinois glacial Episode, the Middle Pleistocene Yarmouth interglacial, the Illinois glacial Episode in the Middle Pleistocene, the Sangamon interglacial, and the Late Pleistocene Wisconsin Episode. The Old Kentucky River was tributary to the Teays, depositing sands at ca. 1.5 Ma, confirmed by multiple 10 Be- 26 Al cosmogenic radionuclide burial ages. Glacial till uncoformably overlies Old Kentucky River sands and demonstrates that pre-Illinois ice extended into Kentucky. The modern-day course of the Ohio River was incised after the pre−Illinois Episode, and then aggraded with transportation of Illinois Episode glacial outwash. Deposition of outwash at the mouths of tributaries caused impoundment and slackwater deposition in tributary valleys; the Claryville Clay has long been assumed to represent a pre-Illinois lacustrine deposit, but new optically stimulated luminescence feldspar geochronology yields a Middle Pleistocene age of ca. 320 ka. We have not observed Illinoian till in Kentucky. The final advance of the Laurentide ice sheet did not reach Kentucky, however, high sediment volumes were transported along the Ohio River and impounded tributaries, similar to the Illinois Episode.

Abstract The Middle Ordovician High Bridge Group and Kentucky River fault system are exposed along the new part of U.S. 27 just north and south of the Kentucky River near the village of Camp Nelson, Kentucky, in the southwestern quarter of the southwestern section of the Little Hickman 7½-minute quadrangle (Fig. 1). There is ample room to safely park along roadcuts here, but caution is strongly urged because of the common occurrence of heavy traffic. Stop 4 is located on the east side of “Old U.S. 27” along an unnamed road just north of the river and below stop 1.

The Pennsylvanian strata of western Virginia, southeastern Kentucky, Tennessee, and northwestern Georgia consist of shales, sandstones, siltstones, numerous coals, several conglomerates, some thin bands of ironstone, and a few limestones. There is a maximum thickness of nearly 6000 feet near Big Stone Gap, Wise County, Virginia. The strata are of early Pennsylvanian age, equivalent to the Pottsville and the lower part of the Allegheny of Pennsylvania. The region is divided by anticlines, thrust faults and state boundaries into six or more segments where the strata have been differently named and classified. The coals of minable thickness have been named in the many mining districts in the area, and some massive cliff- or bench-forming sand-stones or conglomerates, a few thick shales, and some marine limestones have been named; most of the other lithologic units are unnamed. Field studies permitted the correlation of many of the coals and other named beds or formations between separated areas and a general classification of the strata for the area of this report was made, as follows: Strata of Kanawha and Lower Allegheny age Anderson formation, 560–950 feet Scott formation, 475–880 feet Jellico formation, 330–630 feet Briceville formation, 500–1800 feet Strata of Lee (New River) age Corbin sandstone, 10–150 feet Duskin Creek shale, 50–300 feet Rockcastle sandstone, 40–220 feet Vandever shale, 30–270 feet Newton sandstone, 0–100 feet Eastland shale, 0–700? feet Herbert sandstone, 0–100 feet Whitwell shale, 10–200 feet Sewanee conglomerate 0–150 feet Gizzard formation, 0–615 feet It is not proposed that these names, most of which are derived from Tennessee localities, should supplant the systems of nomenclature already in use in Kentucky, Virginia, and Georgia. However they serve better as a basis for comparing the successions of the several areas than do the other classifications. It was found that there are marked changes in lithology and thicknesses of stratigraphic intervals on opposite sides of major structures such as the Sequatchie Valley anticline and the Pine Mountain thrust fault, suggesting that these structures developed along belts which suffered differential movements during early Pennsylvanian sedimentation. The strata exhibit a type of cyclical sedimentation, but details of lithology vary more between nearby localities than in the Eastern Interior and Mid-continent areas where the Pennsylvanian is classified into cyclothems which can be traced for long distances. The subdivision of this succession into cyclothems seems inadvisable at present. The sediments are all of aqueous deposition, and probably record piedmont, delta, marsh, lake, and shallow sea-floor environments. Marine fossils are found in only about one per cent of the strata, while fossil plant remains are much more widely distributed. This suggests that the waters in which deposition took place were fresh a large part of the time. Neither marine invertebrates nor fossil plants have yet been used as a basis for fine subdivision of the stratigraphic column, although both offer promise of some usefulness for this purpose. Spores isolated from coal by maceration are also being investigated as aids in correlation. The source of sediment would seem to lie to the southeast in the old land Appalachia, because thicknesses of stratigraphic units increase and the sediments generally become coarser-grained in that direction. There is, however, some evidence suggesting the derivation of sediment from the Canadian shield to the north, the greater thickness in the southeast in that case resulting from greater downwarping rather than proximity to the source of sediment. The paper includes descriptions of 37 stratigraphic sections representing the formational subdivisions in the several districts in which different systems of nomenclature are used. It is illustrated with 20 cross-section diagrams, showing the nature of stratigraphic variation between outcrops along selected lines paralleling and transverse to the regional strike.