Excerpt from Mineral Resources of the Bradwell Bay Wilderness and the Sopchoppy River Study Area, Wakulla County, Florida

The Bradwell Bay Wilderness and Sopchoppy River Study Area comprise acres (93 km) in the Apalachicola National Forest in the Florida panhandle. The area is a swamp covered, almost flat surface of a terrace in which the Sopchoppy River is entrenched. Deposits directly underlying the terrace surface generally consist of as much as 30 feet (9 m) of sand, clay, muck, and peat of Pliocene to Holocene age overlying limestone and marl of Miocene age. The limestone and marl are on the east flank of the gulf trough, and are underlain by a thick sequence of older Tertiary and Cretaceous sedi mentary rocks. Older formations of probable Jurassic, Triassic, Paleozoic, and Precambrian ages are known from scattered holes drilled for oil in surround ing areas.

The Hawthorn Formation of middle Miocene age, from which phosphate and fuller's earth are chiefly produced in Florida, is not found in the Study Area; therefore, the potential for resources of phosphate is low. Phosphate pellets, however, were found in auger holes in sand above the St. Marks and Jackson Blufi' Formations of early and late Miocene age, respectively. The pellets are mostly in sands deposited in an estuary during Pliocene or early Pleistocene time; they were derived from older rocks, presumably the Hawthorn Formation.

Approximately tons metric tons) of air-dried peat are available from bay swamps in the Study Area, but the deposits are too shallow and widespread to make mining economically feasible. Large quantities of quartz sand are available in abandoned beach ridges and in deposits that were originally laid down in a shallow nearshore marine environment, but sieve tests show that the sand is generally too fine for mortar and masonry use; it is not suitable as moulding or glass sand because it lacks the re quired size grades and purity.

About the Publisher

Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com

This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.