Geodatabase for the Blue Ridge Parkway in Virginia

The US Geological Survey, in cooperation with the National Park Service, conducted detailed geologic mapping on 35 7.5-minute quadrangles, within a 2-mile-wide+ corridor centered on the Parkway, from BLRI (Blue Ridge Parkway) Mile Post (MP) 0 near Afton, Virginia southward to MP 218 at Cumberland Knob, approximately 1.3 km south of the Virginia - North Carolina State Line. Detailed bedrock geologic mapping for this project was conducted at 1:24,000-scale: Station point geologic data (lithology, structural measurements, mineral resource information, and other important geologic observations) were used to identify major map units, construct contact lines between map units, identify the nature of those contacts, determine contact convention control, trace structural elements across the project area,and determine fault orientation and kinematics. Station point geologic data, contacts and faults from previous work in the BLRI corridor were also evaluated for compilation and synthesis in the BLRI mapping project. The BLRI cuts at an oblique angle nearly the entire width of the Blue Ridge Geologic Province in Virginia. Thus, the geology varies significantly along it's along its 216-mile traverse, from Mesoproterozoic basement and Neoproterozoic to Cambrian rocks in the core and western flank of the Blue Ridge anticlinorium in the northern section of the BLRI corridor, to Neoproterozoic to early Paleozoic metamorphosed sedimentary rocks in imbricated thrust sheets of the eastern Blue Ridge south of Roanoke. At Roanoke, the BLRI traverses a section of the Valley and Ridge geologic province. Within this framework, sixty bedrock map units were defined within the BLRI corridor in Virginia.