Collecting Marine Fossils, Limestone, Black Slate, Banded Agate, Chert, Drusy Quartz at Fort Payne, Alabama

March 29, 2009
by Ray Hill

Fort Payne, Alabama has got to be one of the premiere rock collecting locations in the Southeast. Marine fossils such as brachiopods, crinoids stems, horn corals, branch corals, bryozoans, blastoids, and micro-fossils are found in abundance here. Many road cuts and banks in and around Ft. Payne will yield marine fossils. There are also a number of chert quarries just on the outskirts of town where you can collect some very colorful chert, some banded agate, and drusy quartz on chert. I think a lot of this material would be good for tumbling and possibly cabbing.

Ramona Beshear, one of my rockhound buddies and I visited Fort Payne on Sunday, March 29, 2009. It was a three hour drive from Atlanta and when we got there it was very overcast and about 50 degrees, a little chilly but otherwise okay. The ground in the areas we visited was water saturated, and our shoes got pretty muddy, but what’s a little mud to a true rockhound?

We came into Fort Payne from the south on State Highway 35. When we got into town, we crossed a train track and came to a stop light. This is Gault Avenue, also Hwy 11. We turned right there heading north on Hwy 11. (Gault Avenue there in town.) We went 2-½ miles to mile marker 231 on the right side of the road. There is a gravel driveway on the right here. (When we visited this site a year or so ago, a highway construction company had an office trailer set up here and also stored some heavy equipment. They’re gone now but the nice gravel drive is still there.) From where you turn in on this gravel driveway back to where the cut-bank extends is about four to five hundred feet. The collecting area is all along the flat sections at the base of the banks and up on the banks themselves.

Here are a couple of photos of this collecting area. Notice how far back this large bank goes from the highway.

This is an easy collecting site as you don’t have to walk very far to start picking up fossils, and you don’t need to do a lot of digging for the material.

From all the information I could gather online about the Ft. Payne, Alabama area the material found here is Mississippian age, about 320-365 million years old. At this location you can pick up plenty of rock plates packed with different fossils: brachiopods, horn corals, branch corals, crinoids, blastoids, bryozoans, and many micro fossils. You won’t have any problems finding fossils at this location, there’s plenty there and they are easy to find.

Ramona called me this morning and said she had taken some small rock pieces from this location and examined them with her microscope. She was raving that nearly every piece she examined was just chock-full of micro fossils. Ramona is a retired scientist (entomologist) with the University of Georgia and tends to get excited about things like that.

As I said earlier, the ground was pretty wet when we were here so that eliminated being able to sift through some of the dark gray marine sediment that had washed down from the banks. I did walk this area and picked up several small brachiopods and five horn coral fossils. The brachiopods are about three-quarters of an inch in diameter and the loose horn corals are about one inch. Down on the flat areas I picked up a small slab of rock about half an inch thick and about three inches by six inches that had six horn corals in it. This was a very nice find.

After collecting at this location for a couple of hours we went back south on Hwy 11, the way we had come. We went past the light where Hwy 35 turns off to the south and continued on south on Hwy 11 (Gault Avenue), to where Hwy 35 comes in there on the right. This will be the 6th stop-light from where Hwy 35 comes into Ft. Payne from the south. Highway 35 has a dog-leg offset in it here in town. It comes into Ft. Payne from the south, turns left at Hwy 11, goes six traffic lights and then turns back to the right going out of town on the north side.

A train track runs parallel to Highway 11 through town. In most places the tracks are only a few yards from the main street in town. Ramona and I noticed that the gravel track bed is made up of a dark gray stone that is coming out of a huge quarry south of town. The material appears to be marble. We found that some of this material has microscopic fossils in it. You might want to check out some of this material.

Going south on Hwy 11, when you get to the sixth stop light, turn to the right onto State Hwy 35. Just as you make this turn you will notice that there is a large shopping center on the left side of the road. Behind the long row of buildings you will see a long, high cut bank. Looks to me like they cut this bank back in order to set the building back from the highway. The material in this bank appears to be chert, a cryptocrystalline variety of quartz. You will find some crinoids stems and other fossils here. You may also find a few small, quarter- size, quartz geodes. Behind the shopping center there is an area where delivery trucks can make deliveries to the back of these businesses, and just beyond that is a concrete wall that is about six feet high. I assume this is to keep material from falling from this high bank and going out onto the truck parking areas behind the stores. Beyond this concrete wall there is an area that is ten to fifteen feet back to the base of the cut bank. Ramona and I walked the length of the bank, on the side of the concrete wall next to the high bank, and we both picked up a small Zip-Loc bag of crinoid stems. You might want to check this area out too.

From the shopping center with the big bank behind it, continue north on Hwy 35, (DeKalb Plaza Boulevard, SW), for 2.2 miles. You will see a road cut bank on the left of the road. Black slate is in the bottom part of the bank here. There is also limestone, chert and some fossils in this bank. I picked up a few specimens of a shiny black slate here.

From this location continue going north on Hwy 35 until you go under a bridge. This will be Highway I-59. Once you past this bridge go about another mile and you will see chert quarries on both sides of the road.

In the quarries here you will find some colorful chert pieces that range from a white color to tans and cream. Some of this material is banded with light and dark bands. I haven’t done so yet but I’m thinking that this material will make beautiful tumbled stones. You can also pick up some banded agate material, some with drusy crystals on the outer surface. This is from silica rich water percolating through the ground and depositing the quartz in narrow bands, referred to as flow-banding. Ramona laughed at me when I went where we had parked my little truck, backed it up near a section of one of the high banks, and loaded a chert/quartz rock about 16” inches in diameter into the back. The top of this piece is covered with drusy quartz crystals in an area of about 12” by about 16”. This nice hunk of material now makes a lovely yard rock. I get a “Wow! That’s nice!” comment from most folks that see this beauty.

Now, the following information doesn’t have anything to do with rock collecting in Ft. Payne, Alabama, but I want to give you some information about this quaint northeast Alabama area that I find very interesting and will make the trip there more enjoyable.

1) Here are a couple of photos of a historical marker that stands beside Highway 35 North in Ft. Payne. The marker tells of the plight of the Cherokee Indians that were rounded up from the Ft. Payne area and taken at gun-point out west in what is now known as “The Trail of Tears”. To me this tells of a very sad, unjust act committed by our nation, against a peace-loving people. It saddens me to be reminded of this unforgivable, tragic, event perpetrated by our leaders at that time.

2) When in Ft. Payne I happened to stop by the offices of the DeKalb County Tourist Association located on Hwy 35. I met a real nice lady, Avice Person, who I gathered is a volunteer there. She was most helpful in loading me up with brochures and information on eating places, lodging, shopping opportunities, pottery shops, museums, the 1889 Fort Payne Opera House, the area of Little River Canyon, the 1891 Depot museum, the “ALABAMA” Fan Club and Museum, and much, much more. Unfortunately for me, my trip to Ft. Payne was for just one day, and, I found out all the information about the area around there only after I had spent most of the day there. I can see that this area would be a great place to visit, even for the non-rockhound. Yes, there is very good rock collecting here, but, there is so much more to see and do that it would make a trip there worth the time and effort. You can contact the folks at the DeKalb County Tourist Association by visiting their web site: www.discoverlookoutmountain.com. You can also call them at: 1-(888)-805-4740. You can also visit www.tourdekalb.com to contact them. Should you contact the folks there tell them Ray sent you!

Ray Hill
Great South Gems & Minerals, Inc.
www.greatsouth.net
888-933-GEMS

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