Cleanup and Graffiti Removal at Black Mountain

It's infuriating to any decent human that some fools find beautiful places and destroy them. Case in point, Black Mountain, a rock town in Cumberland County, and a segment of the Cumberland Trail State Park has been a location growing in popularity with these idiots.

I became aware of some black spray paint on the boulders below a few months ago and it had been sitting in my mind for some time. The amazing Chattanooga photographer, Kelli Lewis and I planned to catch sunrise there on Saturday, and it was decided that we would put some time into cleaning up and attempting to remove the vandalism there. Terri Likens, Caleb Ottinger, Brandon Mullins, and Cody Julian also joined us participating in the cleanup as well as the graffiti removal.

Upon arrival I noticed plenty of other recent graffiti in the form of blue and green spray paint. Given the vastness of the surface covered in spray paint, I decided to treat only select areas this day.

Here are the before photographs by location:

Green Paint Pen


Black Spray Paint


Blue Spray Paint spot 1


Blue Spray Paint spot 2


Blue Spray Paint spot 3


Blue Spray Paint spot 4 - not cleaned for safety reasons


CitriStrip was applied and left to soak for 30-40 minutes for each location. One or more people used water in a spray bottle and sponges to remove. Our results were mixed, but we believe that all the spray paint sites were at least faded by our effort. The paint pen vandalism was completely removed. Below are the after photos. We would have waited until the water dried to photograph them, but an incoming thunderstorm forced us off the mountain.

Green Paint Pen


Black Spray Paint


Blue Spray Paint spot 1


Blue Spray Paint spot 2


Blue Spray Paint spot 3


Much more work remains. Most people don't want to see vandalism, and it infuriates most people. If most people would act on this, then we could make short work of of the vandalism at Black Mountain and send a clear message to the people who do these things - Don't put your stupidity on display.

Landslide on Gee Creek

While hiking in the South Cherokee National Forest and Wildlife Management area this weekend I observed what appeared to be a fresh landslide. I was excited at the chance to look closely at this and document a fascinating geologic event.

The location of the rockfall is at 35.246533, -84.529235, on the north side of Gee Creek right above the cement tunnel formerly used by the mill operation. The rock that dropped is Nebo Sandstone, part of the Chilhowee Group. In the photos and map below you can see the steeply dipping in-situ rock unit. 

Oddities of Official Place Names of the United States

There are 2,278,005 registered place names in the United States. The average length of a place name is 19.46 characters. The average number of words in a place name is 2.89.

At 117 characters, the longest official place name of the United States is Center Street Colored Methodist Episcopal Church-Chestnut Street Colored Methodist Episcopal Church Historical Marker.

There are 25 places which have short names of only two characters: 
Ai, AL, Ai, GA, Ai, OH, Ai, MH, Ai, NC, Ex, AK, Hy, MO, Ii, PW, Iw, FM, Kì, HI, Ka, VA, Le, WY, Mo, FM, Na, FM, Ni, MH, Or, FM, Ot, FM, Ot, FM, Ow, FM, Oz, KY, Ri, FM, Ti, OK, To, FM, Uh, FM, and Yo, MH

With 19 unique words, the building San Juan County Fire District 2 / Orcas Island Fire and Rescue Station 24 Deer Harbor / Spring Point tends to stand out.

You may find it frustrating as a resident of Grant's Vacation Park Recreational Vehicle and Mobile Home Park if you are having to write your address frequently. It turns out that all 8 of the places one can live with the most words are all mobile home parks.

There are some odd stream and river names out there, including Little North Fork North Branch North Fork Elk River, or North Fork of South Fork of North Fabius River.
Data processing done with data from NationalFile_20180801.zip located at 

Domestic and Antarctic Names - State and Topical Gazetteer Download Files. Software used was Microsoft Access 2007, and ArcMap 10.6.1.

Cedar Ridge Crystal Cave

This is mostly macro work that I did at Cedar Ridge Crystal Cave. I experimented with extension tubes shooting water drops at the end of soda straws. The photos aren't as crisp as I would like. Next time I will use a different lens. If anyone sees this, let me know what you think. :)

Water Feature Names

I was curious after a conversation with fellow geographer, David Starnes, what the frequency of descriptors (which I call classes for the purpose of this analysis) like stream, creek, branch, prong, fork, etc. are regionally. I did some analysis, and here are some tables of what I found. Details of the analysis follow the tables.

I very well could have called this "Hierarchical Water Feature Name Frequency using GNIS in the NHD Regions 5 and 6" but opted for a more user friendly title given my audience. For this analysis I utilized the National Hydrography Dataset (NHD) which gets names for features from the Geographic Names Information System (GNIS).

I joined NHD data to the NHD Plus data to get stream order information, which for the lay user could be considered a measure of the size of the stream. Since I was interested in changes in the descriptors of smaller water features grading upwards to larger water features, stream order was the easiest measure to work from and hierarchically organize the data.

I used Excel to isolate the final word in each water feature name to see only the descriptor. I counted frequency of each descriptor by stream order, as well as the length of stream miles associated with each. Both the count and length can be used to assess frequency.

Table 1 (Water Feature Names : Modal Data) shows the number of unique descriptors associated with each stream order, as well as the mileage of each stream order in terms of total, named, and unnamed features. The class mode shows the most frequently used descriptor.

Table 2 (Water Feature Names : Data) shows the individual descriptors for each stream order and their respective frequency and length. Interesting descriptors point to unique place names such as The Slough in Meigs County, Ohio; The Thoroughfare in Pleasants County, West Virginia; Right Fork Dixfork in Pike County, Kentucky; Upper River Deshee in Knox County, Indiana; Old Kinniconick Bed in Lewis County, Kentucky; Big Sang Kill in Mingo County, West Virginia; and Virginia Rill in Martin County, Indiana. Curious names likely have interesting stories. If you know one of them, leave me a comment!

Waterfalls and Wildflowers at Standing Stone

Standing Stone is an area named for the monolith that once stood in Monterey. (Sadly, little remains of the original monolith.) The area consists of a state park, state forest, and a wildlife management area.

I spent several days over the last week exploring Standing Stone trying to catch wildflowers in their prime. My timing was excellent and the showing of wildflowers was as well. After a few hours of exploration I noted that the Chattanooga shale exposed in the park often produced nice cascades and waterfalls. Unfortunately, most were ephemeral features. On a hunch I ended up walking up Bryans Creek and found the most beautiful undescribed 35' waterfall. 

Previous to my documentation of Bryans Creek Falls, I had bumbled around with my friends Kurt Heischmidt and Haley Dickson. We visited OV440 (a cave whose name I feel best to withhold), and a few other interesting features.

Then there were the wildflowers. Five species of trillium, and plenty of other flowers certainly made the trip worthwhile.

Fort Payne Formation & Chattanooga Shale Contact Waterfalls

Part of the beauty of the Eastern Highland Rim is that the morphology of landforms is largely consistent along its north-south axis. Waterfalls are especially predictable when one knows some basic geology, and can recognize the patterns.

It's hard to talk about waterfalls in Tennessee without mentioning the webpage Tennessee Landforms. Tom Dunigan has invested a lot of time in cataloging the resources of the state and making them available to outdoor enthusiasts. The existing waterfall data used in this post all originates from his webpage and my own exploration.

The map below illustrates the relationship to known waterfalls and to the contact between geologic units. Note that described waterfalls are found where streams cross the Fort Payne formation and (since there is no Chattanooga shale on this map, we'll use the next lower strata...) Leipers-Catheys limestone.


Examples of its waterfalls on this geologic contact include Cummins, Burgess, Twin, and many of the other large waterfalls in the region. Some areas produce large, spectacular waterfalls with deep plunge pools surrounded by an amphitheater of rocks. Some of them produce gentle cascades in steep walled valleys covered in wildflowers.

The ability to recognize both the Fort Payne formation and Chattanooga shale in the field is important for me in finding waterfalls. It's also important to be able to read maps and understand the shapes, forms, and signatures of each of these rocks to investigate leads.

In the lidar map below, circled in red is an example of the signature I'm talking about. The south by southeast trending "U" shape indicates cliff lines. Where streams cross cliffs, one gets waterfalls. Knowing the general geology from being there in person tells me that it is Fort Payne formation and Chattanooga shale.



The above feature in map, presented below as it appears in real life.



Spotting the Fort Payne formation in the field is first a matter of understanding what cherty limestone looks like. Chert has sharp edges. Because it is comprised of a lot of chert, it is not easily mechanically weathered and makes great cliffs. Fort Payne formation ranges in color from orange (gravels are often orange) to grey and one can find quartz geodes embedded in and scattered around it under cliff lines. The fossil crinoid stems are some of the largest in the region, with many as thick as a thumb. Other fossil evidence in it includes gigantic worm burrows, which appear as large linear features protruding from the bedrock. Finally, if you have a hand sample, remember that chert will scratch a knife's blade.

Chattanooga shale is much easier to identify. It is a thinly laminated black shale that will easily break given any mechanical weathering. It's ability to be easily mechanically weathered makes it easy to break with your bare hands. In the photograph of Waterloo falls below, the shale on the left appears white due to a gypsym crust (also see the close up of another example of gypsum crust on Chattanooga shale). If you're using color to identify the rock, be sure to look at a fresh face, as opposed to one which has mineralization on it. Often it will create large square or rectangular blocks due to vertical fractures which run at 90 degrees to one another. This can be seen in the photo below with Toni.

Below is a rock cut on Highway 52 in Clay County which exposes the Fort Payne formation and Chattanooga shale in a nice clean exposure. In a natural setting one will not have such a good view of the rock as it will be covered in soil, vegetation, and weathered faces which alter the color of the rock.



Below is Twin Falls at Rock Island State Park. This is likely the largest volume waterfall in the state of Tennessee. It originates from the overflow of the Collins River on the other side of the ridge as it passes through caves formed at upper contact of the Fort Payne formation with the Warsaw limestone. It cascades down more than 100 feet down into the Caney Fork river gorge.