222 THE CLAYS OF ARKANSASo 
WHITE COUNTY. 
GENERAL GEOLOGY. 
PRINCIPAL FEATURES. 
The part of White County lying west of the St. Louis, Iron Moun- 
tain and Southern Railway is made up chiefly of ^sandstones, grits, 
and shales belonging to the lower Carboniferous or Mississippian 
series. In the extreme northwest corner of the county, about Rose- 
bud and Romance, these beds are very nearly horizontal, and the 
streams have cut through the steep-sided and rather narrow valleys. 
Here the harder beds of sandstone form broad, flat areas with rather 
abrupt edges. In the southwestern part of the county and in the 
region between Searcy and Griffin Springs the same series of beds 
has been greatly folded, so that the beds dip toward the south on one 
side of the folds and toward the north on the other. In the folded 
area the alteration of hard beds of sandstone with soft beds of shale 
has given rise to alternate valleys and ridges, for the resisting sand- 
stones withstand weathering and form the ridges, while the beds of 
shale break down into soft, easily washed clays, which are carried 
away, forming the valleys. The relations of these interfolded shales 
and sandstones are of great importance to anyone studying the dis- 
tribution of the clays and clay shales, for it often makes it possible 
to trace the same bed for many miles across the county. 
In the region just north of the town of El Paso the parallelism of 
the sandstone ridges and shale valleys is a striking feature of the 
topography. These ridges and valleys begin a few miles west of Buble 
and some of them swing northward around Antioch Mountain and 
then pass nearly due west to the vicinity of Caldron Creek, just north 
of Conway, in Faulkner County. Similar ridges beginning just north 
of the town of Austin can be traced nearly to Palarm Bayou, south of 
Preston, in Faulkner County. The valleys parallel with these sand- 
stone ridges are all cut in shales, and it is to these shales that attention 
is directed. Some of these shales are too sandy to be utilized, but 
others are well adapted to the manufacture of paving brick and sewer 
pipe, and some of them are good fire clays. 
The geology of Round Mountain, in the extreme southwest corner 
of White County, has been examined for the purpose of determining 
the character of these shales. The geology of that particular hill 
is therefore given here in detail. 
ROUND MOUNTAIN. 
A great syncline or troughlike valley known as Cypress Valley 
extends from the vicinity of Beebe to Arkansas River west of Conway. 
In the middle of this synclinal, in White County, in sees. 5, 6, 7, and 
8, T. 5 N., R. 10 W., stands an isolated table-topped hill known as 
