Battery Rock Sandstone Member

Lithostratigraphy: McCormick Group >>Caseyville Formation >>Battery Rock Sandstone Member
Chronostratigraphy: Paleozoic Erathem >>Pennsylvanian Subsystem >>Morrowan Series
Allostratigraphy: Absaroka Sequence

Primary source

Willman, H. B., Elwood Atherton, T. C. Buschbach, Charles Collinson, John C. Frye, M. E. Hopkins, Jerry A. Lineback, and Jack A. Simon, 1975, Handbook of Illinois Stratigraphy: Illinois State Geological Survey Bulletin 95, 261 p.

Contributing author(s)

M. E. Hopkins and J. A. Simon

Name

Original description

The Battery Rock Sandstone Member of the Caseyville Formation (Cox, 1875, p. 204).

Derivation

Named for Battery Rock, a bluff of massive sandstone on the west bank of the Ohio River in Hardin County.

Other names

History/background

Type section

Type location

The type section is Battery Rock, on the west bank of the Ohio River in Hardin County (26, 11S-10E).

Type author(s)

Type status

Reference section

Reference location

Reference author(s)

Reference status

Stratigraphic relationships

Extent and thickness

The Battery Rock Sandstone, a prominent bluff-forming unit (fig. P-3A), is very well developed in Gallatin, Hardin, and Pope Counties, where it is 50-100 feet thick in a large area. It is also as much as 100 feet thick in the western part of the southern Illinois outcrop belt, but there it is more lenticular. Along the southwestern side of the Illinois Basin, the sandstone extends only as far north as Randolph County. In the subsurface to the north and northeast of the outcrop belt, the Battery Rock is difficult to trace because several other thick sandstone units occur in the lower part of the McCormick Group.

Fig. P-3A -- Battery Rock Sandstone Member of the Caseyville Formation capping an escarpment 8 miles north of Cave in Rock, Hardin County.

Lithology

The Battery Rock is generally medium-grained sandstone, but at places it becomes coarse; almost everywhere it contains scattered quartz granules and pebbles, which in places form conglomerate beds. Although the Caseyville sandstones have been called conglomerates, the term "conglomeratic" is more appropriate.

Core(s)

Photograph(s)

Contacts

Well log characteristics

Fossils

Age and correlation

The Battery Rock is correlated with the lower Caseyville conglomerate, or Kyrock Sandstone Member, of western Kentucky and with the lower part of the Mansfield Sandstone of Indiana.

Environments of deposition

Economic importance

Remarks

References

COX, E. T., 1875, Geology of Gallatin County: Geological Survey of Illinois, v. 6, p. 197-219.

ISGS Codes

Stratigraphic Code	Geo Unit Designation
3920	cv-br