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We are
devoted to the preservation
of our abundantly
rich heritage, bequeathed to us by our pioneering ancestors who traveled the
Wilderness Trail, over the Cumberland Gap into Kentucky.
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Today, the crater can be difficult
to recognize for the untrained observer, as the mountains rimming
the Middlesboro Basin are not the eroded remnants of the crater, but
are rather the remains of the fractured layers of rock beneath it.
Millions of years of erosion and
vegetation growth have hidden most signs of the meteor's impact.
Enough evidence remains, however, to support the conclusion of a
meteor impact. The round shape, shattered rock in the middle and
deformed rocks around the sides that have been bent, folded or
shoved are pretty strong evidence that this was a meteor impact
crater.
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Summary of article by
By Steve Kortenkamp*
Impact at Cumberland Gap:
Where Natural and National History Collide
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Some hundreds of million years ago,
an asteroid struck the rugged Appalachian mountain area where the
present Kentucky, Virginia and Tennessee converge. This impact was
instrumental in creating a gentle basin beyond the passage through
ridge at Cumberland Gap, in the long Appalachian mountain range,
which extends some 1500 miles along the eastern coast of North
America extending from Quebec down into Alabama forming a daunting
barrier to early westward expansion of America. There are reported
to be only three natural passages through the mountainous labyrinth
of vertical ridges and dead end valleys. The most well-known of
these is the Cumberland Gap. Here, in prehistoric times, a trail
through this passage was established by migrating herds, followed by
native Cherokee and Shawnee Indians, and then by small parties of
early American hunters and traders and the legendary frontiersman,
Daniel Boone who expanded the trail for travel. By 1792 over 100,
000 people had hiked this route and Kentucky was the first western
state admitted to the Union. 1810, over 300,000 settlers had
migrated west along the Wilderness Road at Cumberland Gap and on
through the impact crater into Kentucky. The city of Middlesboro
lies in the gentle basin of this impact crater. Evidence can be seen
in the uplifted central peak of the crater, and in rock striations
and “shatter cones” formed only during impact events. The Kentucky
Society of Professional Geologists designated Middlesboro as a
Distinguished Geologic Site in September 2003.The mine located
within this impact crater, with the complicated system of faults and
undulating layers of rock requires special techniques to extract the
coal. It is speculated that these techniques might be applied to
mining in outer space.
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Traversing the gap from Virginia to
Kentucky these features are: (green) a gap in the
Cumberland mountain ridge, (red) a three-mile diameter
impact crater just west of the Cumberland ridge,
(yellow) a valley formed partly by the Yellow creek, and
(blue) an eroded gap in the Pine mountain ridge where
the Cumberland River flows through. |
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*Steve Kortenkamp is a research scientist at Planetary Science Institute
Read
complete article from PSI Newsletter Summer 2004 Vol 5, #2 |
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