Frozen Head State Park - Geography

Geography

The Crab Orchard Mountains rise along the Cumberland Plateau just west of the plateau's Walden Ridge escarpment, north of the Sequatchie Valley, and comprise the southern extreme of the greater Cumberland Mountain range. The mountains are generally composed of Paleozoic sandstones and shales of the Pennsylvanian period, formed roughly 300 million years ago. Although the rocks are much younger than the Precambrian igneous rocks of the Appalachian Mountains to the east, the two mountain systems were both formed during the Appalachian orogeny, when the North American and African plates collided.

Frozen Head State Park is centered along the Flat Fork Valley, a bottomland between Bird Mountain and Old Mac Mountain. The valley's namesake, Flat Fork, rises on the southern slopes of Bird Mountain and follows the entire length of the mountain's southern base before emptying into Crooked Fork near Wartburg. Flat Fork, along with most streams in the park, is drained by the Emory River, the headwaters of which are located along Bird Mountain's northern slopes.

Frozen Head, the park's highest mountain, rises near the center of the park. The mountain crowns a ridge that rises from State Highway 62 to the south, peaks at Frozen Head, and maintains a relatively high ridgeline before intersecting Fork Mountain in the northern section of the park. Most of the park's major mountains run perpendicular to this central ridge.