|
Geology of Fayetteville. |
As part of the Geological Survey of Arkansas, state geologist John C. Branner submitted maps of various sections of the state with generalized surface geology. The map above is a portion of the Geologic Map of North Arkansas: Fayetteville-Bentonville Sheet, 1892.
Lithography for the map was done by Julius Bien & Co. of New York. The pale colored areas of this map were identified as primarily “Fayetteville shale”; vertical striping indicated the “Boston Group and Batesville Sandstone”; the broad horizontal striping indicated “Bone chert”; and the thin horizontal stripes indicated “Millstone Grit.”
The rail line marked North Arkansas Western Railway may have been surveyed, but was not built under that name. The Ozark and Cherokee Central, however, was built very closely to that line nearly a decade later. The north-south rail line is the St. Louis & San Francisco Railway.
Other points of interest include the names of the two mountains south of Fayetteville: Baxter Mountain and Brooks Mountain. Today, they are known as South Mountain and Puddin’ Hill, but the Brooks and Baxter names are obviously connected to the Brooks-Baxter War of 1874, in which supporters of two gubernatorial candidates — Elisha Baxter and Joseph Brooks — engaged in armed conflict at the state capital. Baxter eventually won recognition as governor, effectively ending Republican domination of Reconstruction Arkansas.