Virginia Rocks!: A Guide to Geologic Sites in the Old Dominion

From the Eastern Shore to Cumberland Gap, Virginia stretches across five distinct regions, each home to unique and amazing geology. In the Coastal Plain's wedge of fossil-rich sediments, a meteor impact crater—the sixth largest on Earth—helped determine the location of Chesapeake Bay. The Piedmont begins at the Fall Line, the series of East Coast waterfalls that mark the upstream limit to ship navigation, such as Belle Else in Richland, where the turbulent James River erodes potholes in the Petersburg Granite.

Rising up from the rolling hills of the Piedmont, the Blue Ridge forms the spine of the state, its hard basalt and gneisses on display at Shenandoah National Park. Farther west, limestones in the Valley and Ridge are riddled with caves and sinkholes, with dissolution forming one of the wonders of the world at Natural Bridge State Park. Along the very western edge of the state is the Appalachian Plateau, where the No. 3 coal, know as America's Favorite Fuel was extracted from the historic Pocahontas Mine.

Virginia Rocks! is part of the state-by-state Geology Rocks! series that introduces readers to some of the most compelling and accessible geologic sites in each state. Author Albert B. Dickas has picked 50 of the best sites in Virginia for discussing the enormous variety of rocks, minerals, and landforms created over the course of the states more than 1 billion years of geologic history.

Born in Ohio, Albert B. Dickas earned bachelor's and master's degrees from Miami University (Oxford, OH). After serving in the US Navy, he obtained a PhD at Michigan State University, then worked in the petroleum industry for awhile before joining the faculty of the University of Wisconsin-Superior, where he taught for thirty-one years and founded an environmental research center. Today he lives on the crest of Brush Mountain in southwest Virginia, where he continues to engage in research and plan travel excursion in his quest for new and interesting geo-sites on all seven continents. He is the author of 101 American Fossil Sites You've Gotta See and its companion volume 101 Geo-Sites You've Gotta See, as well as Ohio Rocks! A Guide to Geologic Sites in the Buckeye State, also from GSA.