116 FLORIDA GEOLOGICAL SURVEY—I5TH ANNUAL REPORT 
portions of Escambia and Santa Rosa counties in the western extremity 
of the State. It is in most places overlain by Pleistocene deposits. An 
exposure which may be regarded as typical of the Floridian areas is seen 
at Dexland Bluff on the Escambia River east of Gonzales (see Fig. 10). 
The lower half of this section consists of interbedded gray, pink, 
buff and white micaceous clays intercalated with thin lentils of yellowish 
sand. This lower half is the Citronelle formation and is separated by an 
erosional unconformity as well as lithologically from the Pleistocene 
above. The Pleistocene consists of yellow and brown cross-bedded sands 
with some silt. Similar exposures exhibiting the same features may be 
seen at Gull Point, Red Bluff, and at Magnolia Bluff on Escambia Bay 
east of the city of Pensacola. 
The clay deposits now being worked at Quintette and Molino are 
probably Citronelle. These are gray to brown in color, dense, and highly 
plastic. In the vicinity of Pensacola the Citronelle clays are thin and 
variable in lateral extent being interbedded, and even cross-bedded, with 
sands. These clays have been formerly used for stoneware in a pottery 
in Pensacola and are now being used in a pottery in St. Petersburg. 
Citronelle clays are also exposed at several points northwest of 
Pensacola, near Muscogee and along the Perdido River. 
Berry 1 says the physiography and vegetation during the deposition 
of the Citronelle sediments may be compared with that of the present 
time along the east coast of Florida north of latitude 28 degrees, or along 
the Gulf coast west of the Ocklocknee River. He says: “We may picture 
a more or less straight series of barrier beaches, probably with active 
sand dunes, a mile or more in width, and broken in places by inlets. Back 
of these beaches there were wide lagoons, of variable width, perhaps not 
less than a mile and certainly reaching a much greater width where some 
river expanded into a broad estuary, with its shallow and muddy bayous. 
The water in the lagoons varied from fresh to salt according to the pres¬ 
ence or absence of inlets and the positions of the rivers.” 
The Lafayette formation (Pliocene) is not known definitely to ex¬ 
ist in Florida, but some of the sands and clays of north and west Florida 
may represent this formation. 
The beds of recognized Pleistocene age are the Fort Thompson 
Beds, Lostmans River Limestone, Key West Limestone, Key Largo 
iBerry, E. W., The Flora of the Citronelle Formation, U. S. Geol. Survey Prof. 
Paper 96, p. 194, 1917. 
