"C" is for Cook Mountain

"C" is for Cook Mountain (Richland County). Cook Mountain is a twelve-hundred-acre hill located near Eastover. It stands four hundred feet above sea level and has both ecological and geological significance. The mountain is composed of sediments that form the eroded remnants of the Aiken Plateau, which runs from Aiken County through portion of Lexington, Richland, Lee and Sumter Counties. The sediments that form Cook Mountain are largely composed of clays, clayey sands, marls, and sands capped by ironstone. Silicified shells are found within the sediments on the mountain, as are “paint pots,” pockets of colorful minerals encased in sediment shells. Over millions of years the Aiken Plateau was cut and eroded by both the Congaree and Wateree Rivers—leaving Cook Mountain isolated between them as a small monadnock, an isolated hill or mountain exposed by erosion.