162 THE COASTAL PLAIN FORMATIONS OF CECIL COUNTY 



The Red Bank Sands. — This member generally is a red, case-har- 

 dened, rather coarse sand deposit, with here and there a pocket con- 

 taining glauconitic sand. Locally there are lenses and quite extended 

 beds of this glauconitic material. 



Outcrops of Red Bank sands are found quite continuously along 

 the Sassafras river from the head of Back Creek around Knight 

 Island, then up the river and its tributaries to one-quarter of a mile 

 east of Fredericktown. More extensive exposures are found along 

 the headwaters and eastern bank of Scotchman Creek; Little and 

 Great Bohemia creeks, and their tributaries. The largest is at Bo- 

 hemia Mills near the Delaware line, where a 40-foot section is well 

 shown. 



Although the Red Bank sands are developed along the Sassafras 

 river near Cassidy Wharf and Fredericktown, still typical exposures 

 are rare. Along the banks of Back Creek and extending up the 

 valley nearly to Earlville, Red Bank sands appear poorly exposed as 

 a brown sand. Here it is somewhat case-hardened but not so firmly 

 bound together as further east on the Sassafras river. The lower 

 part of the valley west of Fredericktown shows a continuous outcrop 

 of Red Bank for about 20 feet above the river. The formation is 

 here coarse, brown to reddish-brown and much case-hardened, with a 

 fossiliferous bed appearing here and there near the top. However, 

 this furnishes few determinable fossil forms, as in most cases only the 

 casts remain, and these in a coarse, iron-cemented sand which pre- 

 serves almost no detail. One-half mile east of Fredericktown the 

 formation disappears. 



On the east bank of Scotchman Creek and along the headwaters 

 of the creek east of Earlville, sections showing Red Bank sands are 

 quite numerous. Just south of Bohemia Bridge the road-cut shows a 

 fair exposure of reddish-brown sand, but little case-hardened, and 

 bearing no glauconite. The outcrop further up the river is obscured 

 by woods, but the first small tributary to Scotchman Creek crossed 

 by the road going south from Bohemia Bridge shows a 30-foot sec- 

 tion of this same coarse, reddish-brown sand. The first road to the 

 west crosses a little stream where the Columbia gravels contain re- 



