360 
HUBBARD AND CRONEIS 
Butt Mountain is another part of the same structure pitching in 
the opposite direction, east by northeast. Between these two 
summits the structure was so high in pre-peneplain times, that 
the hard layers, Rockwood and Clinch, were eroded off together 
with the less resistant ones down to the Shenandoah and Chicka- 
mauga limestones. New River found its way across the struc- 
ture at this place. The roots of the syncline can still be seen in 
these rocks in the vicinity of Ripplemead. 
The limestones making up the valley areas are of course in- 
fluenced by the above discussed structures, yet in most places the 
dips are not extreme. However, north of Bane, where the anti- 
cline between Pearis Mountain and Buckeye Mountain is folded 
highest, there is an area where many small pronounced structural 
features occur, but these have previously been discussed under 
the heading of the Russell formation. 
Sugar Run Mountain and Pearis Mountain converge toward 
Flat Top Mountain because they stand up on account of the hard 
layers in the above discussed anticline, which is pitching steeply 
westward. Flat Top is then the descending crest of this struc- 
ture as it goes down carrying on its summit Clinch, Rockwood, 
Giles, Romney and Kimberling. 
ECONOMIC RESOURCES 
Coal 
Giles County may be regarded as a block of older Paleozoic 
strata separated from younger rocks, on the north, by the Peters 
Mountain fault, and on the south, by the Walker Mountain fault. 
For this reason, coal is not found in Giles County, although semi- 
anthracite coal of good grade is mined but two miles to the south 
of the Walker fault, in the Cloyds Mountain area of Pulaski 
County. 
Oil and Gas 
The possibility of finding either oil or gas in the rocks of Giles 
County is remote, indeed, and so far as could be discovered there 
has been no drilling for either of these products. 
The strata of this area are so deeply dissected, so complexly 
faulted and mashed, and so intensely folded that any oil or gas 
once imprisoned has long since escaped. ' However, since none of 
the residual products of the natural distillation of hydrocarbons 
are found, it is doubtful if they were ever present here. * 
