The Paducah 1° x 2° quadrangle (hereafter referred to as the Paducah quadrangle) encompasses the eastern flank of the Ozark dome, the southern end of the Illinois Basin, and the northern end of the Mississippi Embayment. Resting on Proterozoic basement, sedimentary rocks of Cambrian through Permian age in the Illinois Basin and Ozark dome are overlapped by weakly lithified Cretaceous, Paleocene, Eocene, and Pliocene strata in the embayment. This is one of the most intensely faulted areas of the North American Midcontinent. A Proterozoic crustal terrane boundary (coincident with part of the Ste. Genevieve fault zone) and a failed intracratonic rift (Reelfoot rift and Rough Creek graben) have been reactivated repeatedly under various stress fields from Proterozoic through late Tertiary times.