Graduate Thesis Or Dissertation
 

The geology of the Nicolai Mountain-Gnat Creek area, Clatsop County, northwestern Oregon

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  • Twelve rock units, from upper Eocene to middle Miocene are exposed in the Nicolai Mountain-Gnat Creek area. They are, from oldest to youngest: Pittsburg Bluff Formation; Oswald West mudstone; Big Creek sandstone, upper Silver Point mudstone, and Pipeline mudstone members of the Astoria Formation; Depoe Bay Basalt; Grande Ronde Basalt; Cape Foulweather Basalt; and sandstone correlative to the Vantage Member of the Ellensburg Formation; Frenchman Springs Member of the Wanapum Basalt; Clifton, Formation (defined by author); and Pomona Member of the Saddle Mountains Basalt. Upper Eocene Pittsburg Bluff Formation is a fine-grained sandstone and laminated siltstone deposited in an inner to middle continental shelf environment. Concordant onlapping by the upper Oligocene, middle shelf to upper slope glauconitic Oswald West mudstone, establishes a tie between the northeastern and northwestern Oregon Coast Range stratigraphies. The lower to middle Miocene Astoria Formation represents another marine onlap sequence, beginning with the fine-grained cross-bedded inner shelf Big Creek sandstone member. The overlying laminted upper Silver Point and Pipeline mudstone members were deposited in a deepening middle shelf to upper slope environment. The middle Miocene tholeiitic basalts extruded from two sources. Grande Ronde, Frenchman Springs, and Pomona basalts of the Columbia River Group erupted from fissures east of the Cascades and flowed down an ancestral Columbia River valley entering the sea in the study area. Simultaneously, petrologically similar but less voluminous Depoe Bay and Cape Foulweather are correlative to the low MgO Grande Ronde and Frenchman Springs in the study area. Abundant dikes and sills and the bathyal mudstone interbeds suggest that the coastal pillow basalts extruded locally onto the sea floor. Subaerial plateau-derived flows are associated with cross-bedded, fluvial to shallow marine arkosic sandstone interbeds. Some of these subaerial lavas flowed into the sea, forming "lava deltas" of foreset pillow palagonite and possibly "invasive" sills. The basalt stratigraphy allows a nearly flow by flow correlation of Grande Ronde and Frenchman Springs units from the Clackamas River area (Western Cascades) into this study area. The presence of Pomona Member in this area is the first substantiated recognition of this petrologically and chemically distinctive subaerial flow in northwestern Oregon. The 200-meter thick Clifton formation (previously called the Pliocene (?) sandstone at Clifton) is now dated by diatom assemblages and stratigraphic position as middle Miocene in age. Three lithofacies are recognized. Facies 1, at the base and top of the unit, is an arkosic, fine- to coarse- grained sandstone with cross-bedding, vertical Rosselia burrows, lignitic coal beds, and rare molluscan shells. It represents a river mouth and shallow marine offshore bar deposit. Facies 2, in the middle of the formation, consitst of well-laminated diatom-bearing carbonaceous and micaceous shelf/slope siltstones with thin fine-grained turbidite sandstones. Facies consists of channelized siltstone breccias, chaotic debris flows, thick amalgamated arkosic grain flows, structureless sandstones, and minor volcanic pebble conglomerates. These lithologies suggest a canyon head and slump deposit formed as a submarine channel cut into the shelf/slope siltstones of Facies 2. Sandstone petrography and grain size analyses indicate that the detritus of the Clifton and other sandstones in the area was derived from acid igneous, metamorphic, and intermediate volcanic provenances similar to those drained by the Columbia River today. Despite high measured permeabilities, breaching limits the reservoir potential of the sandstone. Mudstone units are immature to mature hydrocarbon source rocks. A potential for gas exists in the Cowlitz or its equivalent in the subsurface and in the Clifton channel sandstones projected into the offshore area.
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