Regional structural features, including the hinge line on the west flank of the Appalachian basin, are reinterpreted on the basis of data assembled from recent geologic mapping and subsurface studies of Carboniferous rocks in eastern Kentucky and adjacent areas of West Virginia, Virginia, and Tennessee. The easterly trending Irvine-Paint Creek fault system has been recognized as a major feature affecting late Paleozoic sedimentation in this part of the basin. Except for slight stratigraphic thinning across a few of the associated anticlines, there is little evidence of hinge-line thickening at or near the fault system, or of growth-fault development during the deposition of Carboniferous strata. Structural and stratigraphic features suggest that the Irvine-Paint Creek fau t system is largely postdepositional and that hinge-line development actually occurred along the intersecting Waverly arch. This flexure was identified by Woodward in 1961 in lower Paleozoic rocks of Ohio and northeastern Kentucky, but the extent and thickness trends of Mississippian formations beneath the basal Pennsylvanian unconformity show that the flexure was also positive in late Paleozoic time. Distribution patterns of these formations indicate that the Waverly arch is more extensive than previously indicated, extends southwestward across eastern Kentucky into northern Tennessee, and approximately parallels the Cincinnati arch 50-60 mi toward the west.

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