The Blacksburg Area as herein described is that portion of Montgomery County, Virginia, which comprises the north third of the Blacksburg Quadrangle. This Quadrangle is the southwest quarter of the Christiansburg topographic sheet published by the United States Geological Survey in 1890. The region is in the heart of the Allegheny Mountains. It is bounded by latitudes N. 37° 15' and N. 37° 10' and by longitudes W. 80° 30' and W. 80° 15', an area of approximately seventy-eight square miles. The east-west dimension is 13.8 miles and the north-south dimension is 5.7 miles. The town of Blacksburg, which is the location or the Virginia Polytechnic Institute, is within this area and is at longitude W. 80° 30' near the northern boundary of the area. The region is traversed in a north-south direction by state highway number 8 connecting the Lee Highway, U.S. 11, at Christiansburg, with Princeton, West Virginia, and main U.S. Highways to the west. A spur of the Norfolk am Western Railway connects Blacksburg with the main line at Christiansburg. The town of Shawsville is located in the extreme southeastern corner of the area. The main line of the Norfolk and Western Railway as well as U.S. Highway 11 pass through this town. They both connect that portion of the area with Roanoke, Virginia, and the eastern seaboard, with East Radford, Virginia, the Pocahontas Coal Fields and other points west to the Mississippi Valley. The main line at the Virginian Railway traverses the entire region from east to west, following the North Fork of the Roanoke River from Ironto to Ellett and from there westward by way of Merrimac. This railway, like the Norfolk and Western, is a connecting link between the Atlantic Seaboard at Norfolk, and the West Virginia Coal Fields by way of Roanoke. The Blacksburg Area is consequently readily accessible from most any direction by rail or by road, although within the area it is quite rugged and a few localities are none too easily reached. / Master of Science

The Christiansburg map area consists of about 19 square miles in Montgomery County, Virginia, and is underlain by sedimentary rocks ranging in age from Middle Cambrian to Middle Ordovician. Post-Ordovician strata have been eliminated by thrusting and erosion. From south to north the rocks belong to five fault blocks: the Max Meadows, Pulaski, Saltville, Salem, and Catawba blocks. The Max Meadows block contains only the Middle Cambrian Rome Formation, the oldest rocks exposed within the area. The parautochthonous Saltville block includes rocks from Upper Cambrian to Middle Ordovician in age, which are exposed in windows of the Pulaski fault block. The Pulaski block contains highly fractured and brecciated Cambrian carbonates. The Salem block contains rocks ranging in age from Middle Cambrian to Lower Ordovician. The Salem fault terminates west of Christiansburg, Virginia. Rocks of the Catawba block range from Middle Cambrian to Mississippian in age, but only the section up to the Middle Ordovician is exposed in the map area. The windows through the Pulaski thrust sheet expose the large Christiansburg anticlinorium of the Saltville fault block. The size of each window is proportional to the size of the anticlinal fold developed on the crestal portion of the anticlinorium. The faulting may have occurred shortly after deposition of the Mississippian strata exposed in the Price Mountain window north of the area. The apparent parallelism of the thrust sheets and the overridden strata indicates that much of the present structural relief was formed after emplacement of the thrust sheets. / Master of Science

The conclusion of this investigation, based on field mapping and measured sections, is the Price Formation was deposited on a high-energy shoreline. Sediments for the shoreline were initially transported from a northern deltaic source. The Cloyd Conglomerate Member represents offshore barrier bars, while the Lower Price unit was deposited in a lagoon behind the bars. At the top of the Lower Price unit, the "marker bed" sandstone includes sedimentary features of marine and fluvial origin. This sandstone is interpreted as a delta-front sand, reworked from distributary mouth bars. The Langhorn and Merrimac coal seams were deposited in swamps formed across the sandstone. / Master of Science

The Fries Fault, a 1.2-2.3 km wide zone near Riner, is a major tectonic discontinuity in the Blue Ridge geologic province, characterized by progressive stages of continuous ductile deformation. Trending northeast with a shallow to moderate southeast dip, this fault juxtaposes Little River Gneiss on the southeast against Pilot Gneiss and the Chilhowee Formation to the northwest. A 0.8-1.2 km wide subzone of protomylonite within the Little River Gneiss grades into a 0.5-1.0 km wide mylonite subzone, the latter containing narrow bands of phyllotactic ultramylonite ranging in width from centimeters to tens of meters. Mylonitization is reflected by a marked reduction in grain size, elongation of quartz and fracturing of feldspar, all concomitant with the development of a mylonitic foliation (S_m). Ductile deformation processes involving grain elongation, recovery and recrystallization, combined with chemical processes (primarily pressure solution), are the dominant strain-accommodation mechanisms in the formation of S_m. Rocks within the fault zone have undergone four phases of Paleozoic deformation. An early S₁ foliation has been nearly completely transposed by S_m(S₂), which dominates across most of the area. The development of S_m was accompanied by a retrogressive metamorphism that altered basement rocks from lower amphibolite to greenschist facies. Chilhowee Group rocks remained at lower greenschist facies. Post-faulting deformation produced an S₃ crenulation cleavage associated with northeast trending, overturned F₃ folds. Subsequent refolding produced open, northwest trending F₄ folds. Although the bulk deformation is progressive simple shear, flattening is increasingly dominant during the later stages of deformation. / Master of Science