NCGS Core Repository

The Legacy Core and Cuttings Collection (LCCC) is an ArcGIS geodatabase compilation of pre-1988 NCGS onshore holdings for 875 boreholes (Hoffman and Nickerson, 1988) referencing 11,000 feet of core, 365,000 feet of cuttings, and 1,250 geophysical logs. The 875 boreholes are categorized as:

• WELLDATA: includes borehole records for domestic, municipal, and industrial water wells and mineral exploration core holes and stratigraphic tests
• OILTEST: includes records of oil and gas exploration wells
• TRIASSIC: includes borehole records for the Triassic basins
• HARDROCK: includes borehole records for drilling in the Piedmont and mountain terranes, mostly related to mineral exploration

NCGS Well and Borehole Collections Viewer

A standardized naming schema was applied to all the boreholes, based on year drilled, county name, and order of acquisition.  Each borehole has a folder at the CPO, organized by county and the standardized name, that holds any hardcopy metadata related to the borehole (e.g. letters of transmittal, core logs, downhole logs).  Metadata schema for this collection include the Field Names: NCGS CODE, OTHER CODE, GW GRID, COUNTY, WELL NAME, OPERATOR, DEPTH, WELL DATUM, LATITUTE, LONGITUDE, DRILLED BY, DATE DRILLED, LOGGED BY, DATE LOGGED, LOGS, SAMPLES, SLIDES, LITH LOG, CTGS, CTGS INTERVAL(S), CORE, CORE INTERVAL(S), SWC, AND SWC INTERVAL(S).

Borehole records in the WELLDATA and OILTEST categories include archived data that support the hydrostratigraphic framework of NC: 1) Brown, Miller and Swain, 1972; 2) Winner and Coble, 1996; 3) the NC Division of Water Resources on-line data pages (Fig. 3). You can find data on the DEQ Division of Water Resources Data, Statistics, and Maps webpage.

In 2012, Virginia Division of Geology and Mineral Resources staff scanned hard-copy (paper) metadata associated with the LCCC collection and entered it into the National Geothermal Data System maintained by the Kentucky Geological Survey. This database includes state-wide well and borehole observation records for North Carolina (approximately 4,800 scans from over 1,000 sites). Scanned records include geologist borehole lithology logs, geophysical logs, driller’s logs, cement bond logs, and formation test logs.

In the 1990s, part of the LCCC collection, mainly TRIASSIC and HARDROCK cores, were moved to an off-site warehouse called the Cary Annex. The relocated collections were not inventoried.  The roof of the Annex collapsed after a major hailstorm in 2017.  An FY17 NGGDPP grant provided funds for NCGS to salvage and to rescue the building’s contents. The rescued contents included  approximately 45 pallets of core (24,456 feet of core in 1,952 wet boxes) that remain stored and deteriorating in two, 40-ft conexes at the CPO. A FY19 NGGDPP grant funded an inventory of ‘safe’ holdings stored in the CPO. NCGS confirmed that 235 HARDROCK and TRIASSIC cores were not located inside the ‘safe’ CPO, and were part of collections moved to the Cary Annex. These legacy cores are either lost, damaged, or remain at risk.

Results of FY19 Inventory of Core and Cuttings Collections

A NGGDPP grant funded an inventory of the onshore, core and cuttings collections that are stored safely inside the CPO.  Eleven borehole collections (Table 1) were identified; these were described and uploaded into the National Digital Catalog.  A description of each collection is provided below.  Collections included 3,416 borehole records that described 688,440 ft of borehole data.  The inventory included 8,027 core boxes, 2931 boxes of cuttings, 2118 Geoprobe tubes (4 ft length), and an unspecified number of vibracore tubes (1 m length).

Legacy Core and Cuttings Collection (LCCC) Geodatabase Organization

1. Original Master: an inventory of the NCGS Legacy Core and Cuttings Collection prior to any loss or damage of core and cuttings. The ORIGINAL MASTER LCCC included 875 boreholes. The inventory confirmed that: 1) cores and/cuttings for 640 borehole records were identified as safe; 2)  no cores or cuttings for 235 boreholes were located in the CPO; these holdings include 1622 boxes of core that were either lost in the Annex collapse or remain damaged on pallets; 3) another 330 boxes of core rescued from the Annex are not part of the LCCC; these remain undocumented; and 4) NCGS has not yet secured funding to complete the rescue of the 47 pallets of at-risk cores removed from the Annex.
2. Confirmed: the confirmed collection describes the subset of the LCCC - Original Master that remains safe and stored in the NCGS Coastal Plain Office and Core Repository in Raleigh, NC.
3. At Risk or Lost: describes the subset of the LCCC-Original Master that remains lost or at risk after the collapse of the roof of the Cary Annex. Approximately 45 pallets of rescued core remain stored in conexes or in aisles of the NCGS Core Repository.
4. Cuttings Only: identifies boreholes the Confirmed collection from which cuttings were collected, and remain stored in the NCGS’s Coastal Plain Office and Core Repository. These are confirmed ‘safe’.
5. Duplicate Cuttings: identifies duplicate cuttings samples for a number of boreholes in the Legacy Core and Cuttings Collection.  These remain stored in the NCGS’s Coastal Plain Office and Core Repository, but are shelved separately from the Original Master collection of cuttings.  These are confirmed ‘safe’.
6. Cores Only: identifies boreholes in the Confirmed collection from which cores were collected and remain stored in the NCGS’s Coastal Plain Office and Core Repository. These are confirmed ‘safe’.

From 1991 to 1997, NCGS staff Geologists John G. Nickerson and Norman K. Gay mapped the Coastal Plain portion of the Raleigh 100K sheet. For the subsurface analysis associated with this mapping, 392 boreholes were drilled in an area that included the following quadrangles:  Angier, Bailey, Clayton, Edmondson, Flowers, Fuquay Varina, Garner, Knightdale, Kenly East, Kenly West, Lucama, Lake Wheeler, Middlesex, Powhatan, Stancils Chapel, Selma, Spring Hope, and Zebulon.  Many of the boreholes were drilled by Patterson Exploration Services, Inc., of Sanford, NC. Total footage drilled was 10,089 ft using a variety of drilling methods (e.g. split-spoon sampling, machine and hand augering); maximum penetration depth was 90 ft. Continuous core (6895.3 ft) was collected from 219 boreholes; discontinuous, disturbed samples were collected from 173 boreholes as cutting samples removed from augers, for example.  Unconsolidated Pleistocene and Pliocene deposits were targeted, with refusal mostly in unconsolidated Cretaceous or younger units, or in crystalline basement rocks (or saprolite).

From 1999 to 2006, Senior Geologist Kathleen M. Farrell worked closely with Dr. Harold E. (Ted) Mew, III, Senior Hydrogeologist of the North Carolina Division of Water Quality, now part of the Division of Water Resources, to characterize shallow aquifers and confining units on the Coastal Plain of eastern North Carolina. The projects were funded by the Environmental Protection Agency’s 319H Non-Point Source Grant Program, administered through the NC DWQ’s Non-Point Source Program. 

The funding to NCGS was divided into three parts: 1) 1999-2001 – $25,000 for NCGS to geologically characterize the Lizzie Research Station for the purpose of developing a 3D ground water flow model; 2) FY2001 Grant $96,000 to NCGS to upscale the geologic characterization and modelling to the scale of the Little Contentnea Creek Watershed, and 3) and a three-year FY2003 Grant--$150,000 to upscale the geologic characterization and modelling to the subbasin scale. Cores collected for each of these base grants are respectively referred to as: 1) the Lizzie Cores, 2) the Little Contentnea Creek (LCC) Cores, and 3) the Croatan Cores.  The Lizzie and LCC cores are located in Pitt, Greene, Wilson and Edgecombe Counties.   The Croatan cores are located in Craven, Jones, Pamlico, and Pitt counties.

172 coreholes were drilled using a variety of methods (split-spoon, wireline coring, mud-rotary, and vibracore) to collect more than 9,358 ft of mostly unconsolidated core; gamma logs (natural gamma) were acquired in all boreholes except for the 12 vibracore holes.  Maximum penetration depth was 205 ft.  At the Lizzie Site, surficial units consist of Early Pleistocene deposits on interfluve areas, with younger terrace deposits inset in the drainages. The entire Quaternary section was cored.  At the Lizzie Research Station, the target depth for local basement consisted of a confining unit a black clay with glauconite that is likely Paleocene or Cretaceous in age. In the Croatan area, cores bottomed out in Oligocene or Eocene limestones or siliciclastic Cretaceous units. The DWQ’s drilling program collected many of the cores.  Other cores were collected by Patterson Exploration Services, Inc., or its subcontractors.  NCGS staff collected the vibracores.  Unfortunately, Ted Mew passed away on February 16th, 2005 and the integration between the geology and the modelling remains incomplete. 

The North Carolina Geological Survey (NCGS) was awarded a succession of STATEMAP Grants to map Coastal Plain deposits in the vicinity of the Surry Paleoshoreline complex.  This area includes Fountain, Falkland, Farmville and Walstonburg quadrangles and portions of Pitt, Greene, Wilson and Edgecombe counties. NCGS maps from the known to the unknown; hence the area for detailed mapping was chosen because a significant amount of high-quality subsurface data already existed in the same area because of the EPA 319h Grants awarded to NCGS. NCGS used a small drill rig called a Geoprobe to collect continuous core samples through Pliocene and Pleistocene deposits using the discrete sampling method.  As of 2026, NCGS has drilled a total of 11,726 feet of unconsolidated core at 288 drill sites. Maximum penetration depth was 75 ft. Several additional cores were drilled in Greenville SW, Greenville NW, and Hookerton 7.5-minute quadrangles. These are also included in the core collection.

For a hydrogeologic site characterization project at the Cherry Point Marine Corp Air Station (MCAS) nine coreholes were drilled by the USGS (Raleigh Water Resources Division in Raleigh) between 1994 and 2005. Five of these continuous, boxed cores were donated to the NCGS for permanent storage in its Coastal Plain Office and Core Repository (CPO). The remaining four cores which are unconsolidated and were collected in short, plastic tubes were recently located and inventoried. The collection currently includes 1244 ft of core, from five boreholes.  The location of the other four cores is unknown.  Maximum penetration depth was 305 ft.  Eocene through Quaternary deposits were intercepted.  A report on the cores by Beth M. Wrege and Philip S. Jen, Data from Stratigraphic Test Holes Drilled at the U.S. Marine Corps Air Station, Cherry Point, North Carolina, 1994-2001, and Periodic Water Levels, 2000-2003, USGS Open-File Report 2004–1434.

Since 1988, NCGS participated in a number of mapping and/or stratigraphic projects that included core collection as either a collaborator with other state and federal agencies or universities or as principal investigator (PI). These cores are mainly unconsolidated Coastal Plain cores and unconsolidated cores through weathered basement rocks (regolith). Cores are either boxed or in plastic or metal tubes and were drilled using a variety of methods. Some of these collections include: 1) STATEMAP 2011-2025: Geoprobe Cores (Farrell); 2) EARTH MRI: Geoprobe Cores (Farrell); 3) STATEMAP - Raleigh 100K Sheet: Split Spoon Cores (Nickerson and Gay); 4) Neuse River Basin Mapping Project: Wireline, Mud-Rotary, Split Spoon Cores, Vibracores (Farrell); and 5) OBX-MLD Cores – ECU-USGS-NCGS collaboration: Rotosonic- Long Cores in Plastic Tubes (Farrell).

Sets of cores associated with offshore sand resources, offshore heavy mineral deposits, and Miocene phosphates are archived at the CPO. These are long, unconsolidated cores that are stored in plastic tubes that are split lengthwise. Metadata for these core collections are not yet compiled in a spreadsheet format. Final and interim reports (paper copies and CDs) that describe these data sets as well as the original seismic lines (printouts) associated with the projects are archived at CPO. Inventorying these core collections, and compiling metadata electronically is a future inventory project.

The CPO stores two core collections associated with the Low-Level Radioactive Waste Project (LLRW) - the Wake/Chatham Site Core Collection, and the Richmond County Site Core Collection. Each corehole includes a hard-copy file folder with an engineering log and color photos of the core.  Also on-site, are approximately 200 boxes of paperwork associated with the abandoned project’s archives. For the FY19 inventory, staff located latitude and longitude data for the Wake/Chatham Core Collection.  Latitude and longitude data for the Richmond County Core Collection is not yet located and compiled into a spreadsheet. 

The sorting and organizing of this complete data set that includes cores, seismic lines, borehole records, photographs, geologic reports, and fracture studies and is a future inventory project for the NGGDPP.

Core photographs exist for all the post-1988 Onshore Core Collections. These occur as digital images, or slides that require scanning. It is not known if the Offshore Core Collections were photographed. Cores associated with the LLRW Archives (Wake/Chatham and Richmond County sites) were also photographed; these photos occur as color prints that require scanning.

NCGS stores archives of retired university professors who conducted geologic research in North Carolina.

Rock samples collected by Piedmont mappers for STATEMAP and other projects are stored in approximately 200 labeled buckets on shelves in the 20 foot conex. These are well-organized and labeled but are not inventoried electronically. Thin sections are not inventoried.

Hard copy metadata associated with post-1988 onshore and offshore core collections (e.g. downhole geophysical logs, core logs, seismic sections, analytical results, field books, etc.) are unscanned and are not inventoried.

The CPO permanently archives geologic and geophysical data from the NC Low-Level Radioactive Waste Project. Currently, the collection for the potentially suitable Wake/Chatham site includes 18,184.6 ft of core collected from 160 boreholes with a maximum penetration depth of 560 ft. Borehole records for these drill sites exist as paper data in flat files at the CPO. Photographs of the core are available as color prints.  Additional information on the geology or geophysics of the site remain unsorted and stored in approximately 200 boxes.

NCGS recently participated in a multi-year STATEMAP project to conduct interstate correlation activities in the Fall Zone of North Carolina and Virginia. The Virginia Geologic Survey (Virginia Energy) did not have a Geoprobe rig at the time. To obtain high-quality stratagraphic data, North Carolina was funded to drill Geoprobe cores in Virginia for comparison along strike from North Carolina to identify areas of heavy mineral deposits. As of 2026, the NCGS is in Year Four of the four-year project. To date, the NCGS in conjunction with Virginia Energy has collected at total of 1,10 feet of core at 28 drill sites for this project.

A FY19 Earth MRI grant was awarded to the NCGS to map the Coastal Plain deposits of the Drake and Red Oak 7.5-minute quadrangles. The study area encompasses parts of Nash and  Edgecombe Counties. These quadrangles are located in the Fall Zone, along strike from the heavy mineral mines at Trail Ridge (Georgia/Florida) and pending mining operations in both Virginia and North Carolina. For this project, 4,270 feet of shallow Geoprobe core was collected at 127 drill sites. Target depth was basement rocks or saprolite. Maximum penetration depth was 68 feet. The final report and maps for this project have a projected due date of June 30, 2026.

A FY21 Earth MRI grant was awarded to the NCGS to map Coastal Plain deposits in the Weldon 7.5-minute quadrangle. The study area is in parts of Halifax and Northampton Counties. The quadrangle is also affiliated with the Fall Zone placers and includes the incised valley complex of the paleo-Roanoke River. As of 2026, 771 feet of core has been collected at 17 drill sites. Field work and coring will continue until January 2027.

An Earth MRI grant was awarded to the NCGS to conduct geochemical investigations of regolith (weathered granitoids targeted). For this project, 313 feet of Geoprobe core was collected at 11 drill sites. Maximum penetration depth was 60 feet. Cores were located in Franklin, Davidson, and Davie Counties.

The USS provided multi-year funding for the NCGS to drill, process, and photograph 28 rotosonic cores. NCGS worked by consensus with scientists at East Carolina University, USGS, and the University of Delaware to prepare detailed stratigraphy logs, obtain geochronology, interpret geologic environments using pollen, diatoms and foraminifera, and construct geologic cross sections for the Quaternary of the eastern North Carolina Coastal Plain. A set of CDs is available that documents the cores and the multi-year project. These include: NCGS OFR 2005-04 (OBS-01 to OBS-09); NCGS OFR 2006-04 (OBX 10 to OBX-18); NCGS OFR 2007-01 (MLD-01 to MLD-05); and NCGS OFR 2007-01 (MLD-06 to MLD-10). Compiling and publishing this multi-faceted work remains ongoing as of 2026.