Holston Formation

The Holston Formation, alternately known as the Holston Limestone, is a stratigraphic unit of Ordovician age within the Chickamauga Group in the Ridge-and-Valley physiographic province of the southeastern United States.

A 120-mile (190 km) long outcrop belt of the Holston in East Tennessee is the source of the decorative building stone known as Tennessee marble.

The rock that is quarried for marble is a highly pure (97% CaCO3) crystalline limestone, pink to cedar-red in color.

Among the notable buildings where Tennessee marble is used as a building stone are two in Washington, D.C.: the National Gallery of Art, which uses stone from Knox and Blount counties, and the United States Capitol, which has stairways constructed from Hawkins County marble.

This article about a specific stratigraphic formation in the United States is a stub.

Fortitude (1916), one of the pair of famous lion statues at the New York Public Library which are carved of pink Tennessee marble of the Holston Formation .