Cahaba coal field
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The Cahaba coal field is a broad geological area which was intensively mined for coal from the 1840s to the 1950s and is currently utilized for production of coalbed methane (CBM) gas. Its prominence as a source of coal was largely superseded by the Warrior coal field.
The coal-bearing strata which make up the field were deposited in the Pennsylvanian (Late Carboniferous) age and are part of the Pottsville formation which underlies the eastern escarpment of the Appalachian Plateau.
Pennsylvanian age coal beds have an average bed thickness of 50 feet (15 m).[4] The developed formations are known as the Gurnee Field of the Pottsville Formation.
References
- Squire, Joseph (1890) Report on the Cahaba coal field Montgomery: Geological Survey of Alabama/Brown Printing Co.
- Day, James Sanders (2015) Diamonds in the Rough: A History of Alabama's Cahaba Coal Field. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press ISBN 081735834X