Holston Formation
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The Holston Formation, alternately known as the Holston Limestone, is a stratigraphic unit of Ordovician age within the Chickamauga Group in the Ridge-and-Valley physiographic province of the southeastern United States. A Template:Convert long outcrop belt of the Holston in East Tennessee is the source of the decorative building stone known as Tennessee marble.
Near Knoxville the Holston Formation is about Template:Convert thick but it thins toward the southwest; near Cleveland, Tennessee it is only 200 feet thick. The rock that is quarried for marble is a highly pure (97% CaCO3) crystalline limestone, pink to cedar-red in color.
Use in building and sculpture
Among the notable buildings where Tennessee marble is used as a building stone are two in Washington, D.C.: the National Gallery of Art, which uses stone from Knox and Blount counties, and the United States Capitol, which has stairways constructed from Hawkins County marble.[1]
References
General
- Mineral Commodities, in Mineral Resources of the Appalachian Region, U.S. Geological Survey and U.S. Bureau of Mines, Geological Survey Professional Paper 580, 1968.
Notes
External links
- Knoxville's marble past, Knoxville News Sentinel, August 26, 2008 (article and videos)
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- ↑ Descriptions and Origins of Selected Principal Building Stones of Washington, U.S. Geological Survey, revised 1-14-99, accessed December 23, 2007.