Use of the 1893 Cranberry, North Carolina Topographic Map to Determine Blue Ridge Escarpment Area Drainage System and Erosional Landform Origins, USA

Abstract

A new and fundamentally different geology and glacial history paradigm (new paradigm) is used to interpret previously ignored and unexplained drainage system and erosional landform evidence shown on the 1893 United States Geological Survey Cranberry, North Carolina 1:125,000 scale topographic map (which has a 100-foot or about a 30-meter contour interval). In most regions including the Cranberry map area, geomorphologists have never been able to use the accepted geology and glacial history paradigm (accepted paradigm) to explain most of the topographic map drainage system and erosional landform evidence. Probably for that reason, drainage system and erosional landform evidence shown on the 1893 Cranberry topographic map and its adjacent topographic maps has been ignored for 130 years. This study demonstrates how a new geology and glacial history paradigm (new paradigm) which was developed by using Great Plains and Rocky Mountain topographic map evidence explains the 1893 Cranberry map drainage system and erosional landform evidence (and similar evidence from a small area on the adjacent 1905 Morgantown map). The new paradigm sees the Cranberry map area as being located along the southeastern rim of a continental ice sheet created and occupied deep “hole” with regional erosion occurring and present-day drainage systems developing when the headward erosion of southeast-oriented valleys from the Atlantic Ocean and of northwest-oriented valleys from the developing deep “hole” into the gradually rising deep “hole” rim captured massive and prolonged south- and southwest-oriented meltwater floods. The new paradigm permits explanations for most drainage divides, named and unnamed gaps, barbed tributaries, through valleys extending across drainage divides, isolated erosional remnants, diverging and converging valleys, and unusual river and stream direction changes which the 1893 Cranberry topographic map shows.