To get there, turn left onto Lebanon Pike, and immediately turn left into the driveway of the Fencing store next door.  You will drive up to the parking lot.

Don't forget to ask permission.  This is not a fossil hunting site, but it is the best place to see the evidence of the earthquake.

First take a look at the rock.

How does the rock differ from the rock strata at the previous site?

Was this strata deposited before or after the strata at the previous site?  How do you know?

First look behind the first outbuilding.  You will see that almost all of the layers are horizontal, but there is one area where there are strange twisted, bulbous formations.

Go farther back in the yard and you will see more contortions in the strata.  At one place, the strata seem to be tilted upwards toward the viewer.

Why do you think that this earthquake looks so different from the one we saw on I-65?

The fault, which we saw in I-65 split sediment which had already turned to rock.

Here, we are looking at what is called a seismite.  This is what happens when an earthquake hits unconsolidated sediment.  The earthquake takes the even, horizontal layers of sediment and stirs them up.  When they finally lithify, the strata are contorted, like the ones you see above.
 

When did this earthquake occur?

Unlike the fault on I-65, we know exactly when this earthquake occurred.  It occurred at the time the Laminated Argillaceous Bed was being deposited, about 450 million years ago.

Do you that this earthquake was part of the Taconic Orogeny, which produced the volcanoes, whose ash we find next door?

Evidence indicates that it was.  The connection between the earthquake and the volcanoes is even closer than it appears, because there is a bentonite layer in the Laminated Argillaceous Bed. (Charles Wilson calls it T-5.  It must have been a relatively small eruption, since it has not been named)
 

I have been searching for seismites since November, 2000, when I read about the identification of a huge Ordovician earthquakes which left seismites from New York to Kentucky.

I had read that there were similar formations in middle Tennessee.  James Bassler, in is 1938 book had identified what he called the "contorted bed" in the Laminated Arigllaceous layer of the Hermitage along the Harpeth River in Franklin.

I persuaded my friend Pat Hollyday, USGS ret., to help me look for Bassler's bed.  I believe that we found it on the banks above the Harpeth River in Franklin.

Photos by Pat Hollyday
 

Pat and I have since then found more examples of what we believe to be seismites in Franklin on Mack Hatcher Parkway and on I-840.

Are Nashville's seismites part of the same phenomenon identified from New York to Kentucky?  It's too early to tell.  The investigation continues.  I'll let you know  when I find out more.
 
 
 
 

Question:  How can we be sure that what we have seen today is two earthquakes? Couldn't a single earthquake have created a normal fault in the bedrock and, at the same time, created a seismite in the soft sediment on the sea floor surface? *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  I suppose this could happen, but it's not what happened here.  If a fault and a seismite were to be created in a single event, the seismite would have to be in a higher layer than the fault.  However, here the fault is in the Bigby-Cannon Formation of the Nashville Group, while the seismite is in the layer below, the Hermitage Formation.