Rock Formations At Sailor's Creek

Rock Formations At Sailor's Creek. . The events that unfolded here on April 6, 1865 were influenced by a landscape that was millions of years in the marking. The park is in the Piedmont geologic province. Geologists working in state and federal agencies started mapping this region in the 20th century in order to gain a better understanding of the area., The light gray, uniform, and fine-grained rocks that you see as you explore the battlefield are an igneous rock called Moran Granite that formed deep in the earth millions of years ago. Southeast of the battlefield is another large area of granite-like rock called the Burkeville Granodiorite. Northwest lies a belt of metamorphosed sedimentary and volcanic rocks called the Aaron Formation that can be traced southward all the way into North Carolina. The Aaron Formation and the older metamorphic rocks surrounding it were part of a block of continental crust that originated east of present-day North American; this block of crust was pressed against North American during tectonic plate collisions in the Paleozoic Era., The great Appalachian mountain building event, the "Alleghenian Orogeny", was caused by the collision of North America with Africa during the assembly of the supercontinent Pangea about 300 million years ago. The Moran Granite and other granite bodies int he Piedmont formed by melting of rock deep beneath the ancient Appalachians. Hundreds of millions of years of erosion brought the roots to the surface creating a landscape that supported agriculture, influenced the battle, and now supports a peaceful place of discovery and contemplation.