Appalachian Virginia
Succeeds the Valley on the west. It is a mountain country, traversed its
whole length by the Appalachian or Alleghany system of mountains. It
may be considered as a series of comparatively narrow, long, parallel valleys,
running northeast and southwest, separated from each other by
mountain ranges that are, generally, equally narrow, long and parallel,
and quite elevated. In crossing this section to the northwest, at right
angles to its mountains and valleys, in fifty miles one will cross from six
to ten of these mountain ranges, and as many valleys. As before stated, a
strip of this region is embraced in the Valley counties, as they include the
two or three front ranges that have drainage into the Valley; so that some
900 square miles of Appalachia are politically classed with the Valley,
leaving 5,720 square miles to be treated of here. This, in Virginia, is an
irregular belt of country 260 miles long, varying in width from 10 to 50
miles. Its waters, generally, flow northeast and southwest, but it has
basins that drain north and northwest, and south and southeast. The
heads of the valleys are generally from 2,000 to 2,800 feet above tide, and
the waters often flow from each way to a central depression—that is, from
600 to 1,200 feet above sea level—before they unite and break through the
enclosing ranges. The remarks made concerning the slopes of the Great
Valley apply also to this section, except that the Appalachian valleys are
straighter.
Appalachia is noted as a grazing country, its elevation giving it a cool,
moist atmosphere, admirably adapted, with its fertile soil, to the growth
of grass and the rearing of stock of all kinds.
The geological formations found in Virginia, like its geographical
divisions, succeed each other in belts, either complete or broken, nearly
parallel to the coast of the Atlantic. In fact, the geographical divisions of
the State that have already been given correspond in the main to the different
geological formations, and have been suggested by them; hence,
those divisions are natural.
The formations developed in Virginia, taken in the order in which
they succeed each other and cover the surface, or form the rocks found
with the surface, from the Atlantic at the Virginia capes to the northwest
across the State, are as follows:
Tidewater.—1. Quarternary; 2. Upper Tertiary; 3. Middle Tertiary;
4. Lower Tertiary. Middle.—5. Triassic and Jurassic; 6. Azoic and Granitic.
Piedmont.—7. Azoic, Epidotic, etc. Blue Ridge.—8. Azoic and
Cambrian. The Valley.—9. Cambrian and Silurian. Appalachia.—10.
Sub-carboniferous and Devonian; 11. Silurian; 12. Devonian and Sub-carboniferous;
13. Great Carboniferous.
The character of the soils of Virginia, as of other countries, is dependent
upon its geology.
The mineral resources of the State may be summed up as consisting—
