The Geology of Cowpens National Battlefield, South Carolina

Cowpens National Battlefield, in Cherokee County, South Carolina, is known for a single morning of the American Revolution. The ground it preserves has a far longer history, recorded in metamorphic rock pushed up and folded when the Appalachian Mountains formed. This summary comes from the National Park Service's Geodiversity Atlas, which gathers what the NPS Geologic Resources Inventory knows about each park's rocks, sediments, landforms, fossils, soils and the processes that shape them.

The park and the battle

The park lies between the towns of Gaffney and Chesnee, where U.S. Highway 221-A meets South Carolina Highways 11 and 110. It was established as a national battlefield site on March 4, 1929, and redesignated a national battlefield on April 11, 1972.

It commemorates the Battle of Cowpens of January 17, 1781, in the Southern Campaign of the Revolutionary War. That day Brigadier General Daniel Morgan's militia defeated the troops of British Lieutenant Colonel Banastre Tarleton — a decisive American victory that, the park notes, boosted American morale and ultimately led to the British surrender at Yorktown, Virginia, in October 1781.

Visitors find traces of Colonial-period roads that troops marched along, two historic monuments (the 1856 Washington Light Infantry Monument and the 1932 U.S. Monument), historic structures, a battlefield trail, a nature trail and an auto route around the battlefield's edge.

What lies underneath

The bedrock records a long sequence of deposition, metamorphism, mountain building and erosion. It began as ocean sediment, which hardened into rock, was buried and metamorphosed, then was pushed up as part of the Six Mile thrust sheet and folded and faulted as the Appalachians formed.

Only two geologic units are mapped in the park, both of late Proterozoic to early Cambrian age:

• Quartz-rich mica schist. Weathered schist forms part of an east–west ridge made of a series of tight, double-plunging folds, a ridge that includes Thicketty Mountain.
• Biotite gneiss. Found mostly in the southeastern part of the park, it underlies the lower valleys and is exposed in stream beds.

The two alternate in bands trending northeast–southwest, at right angles to the compressive forces that built the Appalachians.

Geologic Resources Inventory map. National Park Service.

Features and processes

The Geodiversity Atlas lists the park's visible geologic features and active processes as:

• streams and their features, processes and issues;
• erosion of ravines;
• Old Scruggs Lake and its record of fossil pollen;
• restoration of 1781-era wetlands, the Green River Road and the monuments;
• bedrock outcrops;
• earthquakes as a geologic hazard; and
• faults and folds.

Cowpens belongs to the Piedmont Physiographic Province and shares its geologic history, and some of its characteristic formations, with a region reaching well beyond the park.

From the Geologic Resources Inventory image gallery. National Park Service.

Maps and inventories

The Geologic Resources Inventory produces digital geologic maps and reports for more than 270 natural resource parks. Its products include scoping summaries recording how park staff and geologists planned the mapping; digital maps for GIS software and, in newer products, Google Earth; reports on each park's setting, features, management issues and geologic history; and posters of the map data. A Soil Resources Inventory has also been completed for Cowpens. Both are available through the NPS DataStore.

Sources

• National Park Service, "NPS Geodiversity Atlas—Cowpens National Battlefield, South Carolina": https://www.nps.gov/articles/nps-geodiversity-atlas-cowpens-national-battlefield-south-carolina.htm
• The source gives the park's area in hectares and in acres, and the two figures do not match; this page does not state an area.
• The source spells the family name both "Scrugg's" and "Scruggs"; this page uses Scruggs. It also runs "Colonial-period" together as one word.
• The cover photograph of the Scruggs log house is from the National Park Service's page; the report cover shown there is not reproduced.