GEOLOGY OF GILES COUNTY, VIRGINIA 
343 
The Bays Sandstone 
The sandstones and shales overlying: the preceding: formation 
are for the most part, red, yellowish red, or purplish red, but 
there are some g*reen blotches which resemble, but are not, sur- 
face features. The thin bedded sandstones at the top pass 
downward into sandy shales, keeping the prevalent color and 
merging at last into the Sevier below. The formation takes its 
name from Bays Mountain in Tennessee. 
This sandstone scratches very easily and weathers shelly. 
Some layers show cuneiform jointing developed to an unusual 
degree, and the jointing is good throughout, there being master 
joints in several localities. In some places, the sandstone is 
slightly quartzitic but for the most part the formation has been 
but very little metamorphosed. The fracture is usually uneven 
to conchoidal. 
The conditions were not especially good for life development 
during the time these rocks were laid down, nor is the formation 
a good one for preserving fossil forms had life been present, 
hence fossils are found mostly in the lower, niore shaly layers. 
There are several very distinctive nodular layers and cross bed- 
ding is quite noticeable as well as ripple marks, all indicating 
shallow seas. In the top layers, there are fine flakes of primary 
mica as well as some secondary chlorite along joint and bedding 
planes. The total thickness of the formation at the Narrows is 
321 feet. 
Usually the crest of the ridges is formed of Clinch, with the 
red Bays outcropping below, but in some places, especially in low 
gaps, the Clinch has been eroded away and the summit is then 
formed of the Bays Sandstone. 
Paleontology and Correlation 
Fossils in some of the lower layers are well preserved and fairly 
numerous. HeberteUa sinuata and Orthorhynchula linneyi are 
found throughout, as well as a large, unidentified ramose 
bryozoan. 
It would seem from the faunal evidence as though the Bays 
was either Lorraine or Richmond in age. Lorraine forms seem 
to predominate. If this correlation is correct, the Bays sandstone 
of Giles County is younger than the typical Bays of Tennessee, 
