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The coal seams occur in the Bullhead group of Lower Cretaceous age,
and most of the Coal is found in the Gething formation, which comprises the
upper, non-marine part of the group. The Gething formation has a thick-
ness here of 1,400 feet, and consists of sandstone, shale, clay ironstone, and
coal seams. The lower part of the Bullhead group (Dunlevy formation)
exceeds 3,000 feet in thickness, but only the upper part is exposed along the
canyon. ‘This part consists of conglomerates, grits, and coarse sandstones,
together with smaller amounts of medium to fine sandstones and shales,
with only a few thin coal seams.

In measuring a section from Grant Flat to Ferro Point and Aylard
Creek!, McLearn (1923) located and measured fifty coal seams in the
Gething formation, and estimated that the total number would exceed sixty.
Of the measured fifty, nineteen are 11 inches thick or less, fifteen vary from
1 foot to 1 foot 11 inches, four vary from 2 feet to 2 feet 6 inches, eleven are
from 2 feet 7 inches to 4 feet, and one is more than 4 feet thick; three
of the eleven seams expand to more than 4 feet in at least one other section
studied. Ten of these seams were named and described by McLearn (1923),
the Superior, Trojan, Titan, Falls, Little Mogul, Mogul, Castle Point,
Milligan, Grant, and Riverside. In addition, several seams from the
unmeasured Johnson and Gething Creek sections, which have not been
correlated with the ten above, were also described. Two of the ten better
seams are well down in the lower half of the Gething formation and the
remaining eight are in the upper half. It is worth noting that some of the
seams are paired in position; thus, the Titan and the Falls, the Little
Mogul and the Mogul, the Castle Point and the Milligan, and the Grant
and the Riverside. The coal seams in the upper part of the canyon have
been measured and described by McLearn and Irish (1944). Of these the
Murray, Boring, Twin, and Knight seams are worth description.

The accompanying diagram of columnar sections (Figure 14) gives
the thickness and stratigraphic positions of the seams exposed in the walls
of Peace River Canyon, including all the thin seams.

The following descriptions of coal seams are taken from McLearn
(1923) and McLearn and Irish (1944). All coal analyses have been made in
the Division of Fuels and Fuel Testing, Bureau of Mines, Ottawa.

Superior Seam

“The Superior seam is from 23 to 26 feet below the Moosebar contact.
On Aylard creek it is exposed at the upper falls, where it is 2 feet thick. On
Moosebar creek it is exposed at the upper falls, where the creek forks, and
is 3 feet 8 inches thick there. A third known exposure is at Contact point
where the Superior seam is present in a low cliff at the river side; the
thickness is 2 feet 8 inches. At each of these localities it consists of clean-
looking coal, but no samples were taken. ... On main Gething creek, if
present, it is in the high cliff at the upper falls; unfortunately, the position
at which this seam would lie in this cliff is inaccessible, but the size of talus
blocks in front of the cliff indicates that a seam at least 2 feet 6 inches thick
is present. This may be the Superior seam. It should also be sought in
the higher cliffs of Island creek and near the top of the high cliff opposite
Fossil-tree point. The highest cliffs on, and east and west of, Mogul creek

1 This Aylard Creek flows into Peace River Canyon. It is not the Aylard Creek near Gold
Bar.