The Marblehead Marble occurrence consists of four quarries in a band of limestone of the Lower Cambrian Badshot Formation that outcrops between 0.4 and 1.6 kilometres north of Marble Head, in the Slocan Mining Division.

Regionally, the area lies within the Kootenay Arc near the margins of the Ancestral North American Terrane. The Kootenay Arc is a curving belt of highly deformed metasedimentary and metavolcanic rocks which includes the Upper Proterozoic Horsethief Creek Group, the Eocambrian Hamill Group, the Lower Cambrian Badshot Formation, and the lower Paleozoic Lardeau Group. The volcano-sedimentary sequence is intruded by numerous Ordovician, Devonian and Mississippian granitoid plutons. The rocks have undergone regional metamorphism to middle or upper greenschist facies (Paper 1993-1).

The limestone is bounded to the west by schist and quartzite of the underlying Marsh Adams Formation (Hamill Group). Bedding strikes 120 to 125 degrees and dips 40 degrees northeast. The unit is estimated to be 150 metres thick at this locality.

The band of limestone is comprised of fine to medium grained, white to bluish grey and white striped limestone containing a few siliceous streaks, a few flakes of golden mica and some graphite. In one instance, a few veins of white quartz cut the limestone. A sample taken across 8.5 metres of bluish grey and white limestone, exposed 400 metres north of Marble Head, analysed 50.83 per cent CaO, 4.01 per cent MgO, 0.36 per cent SiO2, 0.01 per cent Al2O3, 0.45 per cent Fe2O3 and 0.01 per cent sulphur (CANMET Report 811, page 212, Sample 81). A sample taken across 1.8 metres of bluish white, medium-grained limestone in underground workings 1.1 kilometres north of Marble Head analysed 55.48 per cent CaO, 0.34 per cent MgO, 0.24 per cent SiO2, trace Al2O3, 0.16 per cent Fe2O3 and 0.02 per cent sulphur (CANMET Report 811, page 212, Sample 81B).

Limestone was produced for marble from a quarry 450 metres north of Marble Head and from an underground chamber 650 metres further north, by the Canadian Granite and Marble Company Ltd. between 1909 and 1936; no production figures are available.

About 1900, 4 quarries located about 3 kilometres north of Meadow Creek bridge on Highway 31 south of Duncan Lake, produced white to grey banded crystalline marble known as "Light Kootenay" and "Dark Kootenay". The marble is banded and medium grained. Joint and fracture density varies with location but large blocks are available. Reserves extend west of all four quarries. This marble was used in the Bank of Commerce building in Nelson.