Published by the American Geophysical Union as part of the Field Trip Guidebooks Series, Volume 365.

This field trip is intended to demonstrate the major lithologic sequences and the main tectonic and metamorphic features in a segment of the Blue Ridge geologic province in northwestern North Carolina and adjacent parts of Tennessee and Virginia. Many of the field locations chosen for the six-day field trip emphasize geological characteristics common to much of the southern and central Appalachians. Most of the localities to be visited are in the Blue Ridge, with some in the Valley and Ridge province to the northwest and the Brevard zone and Inner Piedmont to the southeast. The trip provides an overview of the anatomy and evolution of terranes subjected to the following tectonic episodes: Late Proterozoic rifting, the development of oceanic lithosphere, the subsequent closure of this ocean, and further modification by multiple episodes of Paleozoic deformation and metamorphism.