TALLADEGA SLATES OF ALABAMA 
363 
AGE OF TALLADEGA SLATES OF ALABAMA ^ 
Prof^Essor William E. Prouty. 
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill 
The Talladega or Ocoee section of rocks exposed in Clay 
County, Alabama, includes chiefly nacreous argillites (phyllites) 
of varying color, but for the most part gray to green, arenaceous 
slates, and some quartzites and quartzitic conglomerates. These 
rocks represent semi-metamorphosed sediments which originally 
were largely of near-shore origin. 
Towards the eastern side of the wide, or main, Talladega 
area, the dark colored carbonaceous slates increase, there being 
a considerable thickness of them lying below the thick conglomer¬ 
ates of the Talladega Mountain. Well-defined belts of these 
black slates of especially high carbon content occur stratigraphi- 
cally above and to the east of Talladega Mountain. 
The total width of the belt of the Talladega rocks, in, and to 
the west of. Clay County, is approximately 15 miles. This 
belt is sharply cut off both in the southeast and the northwest 
by overthrust faults. The strike of the Talladega formation is 
in most places at a considerable angle with the trend of the 
faults, so that different sections of the formation occur at differ¬ 
ent places along the outcrop. Talladega Mountain, in Clay 
County, is about 1 miles southeast of the westernmost exposure 
of the Talladega (Ocoee) belt, and the southeastern boundary 
fault, in Clay County, is usually near the southeastern foot of 
Talladega Mountain (fig. 22). , At one locality, near Millerville, 
the Talladega rocks have an outcrop width of 7 miles southeast 
from the Mountain. 
There seems little doubt of the equivalency of the Talladega 
1 Published at the suggestion of the Director of the Alabama Geological Survey. 
