Local materials

I have been intrigued by the idea of making some pots from local materials. Kentucky has long been wealthy in minerals but that wealth is usually in the form of coal. I don't have any use for coal itself but I plan to use one of its byproducts.
Central Kentucky presents somewhat of a challenge for a "Local" pot. We have lots of some materials but a lack of others.

What we have.
Here in Central Kentucky we have limestone, and lots of it. Along with those deposits we find marls and other earthenware clays. We have shales. We also have Fly ash from burnt coal. We have some small sources of wood ash and if you have a place to burn things, you can no doubt source endless agricultural byproducts for making ashes of various types. There are deposits of silica sand not too far away. A bit further is an area rich in clays once used to make fire bricks.

What we lack.
All types of igneous rocks. Granite, rhyolite, nepheline syenite.
White clays. There is supposedly some kaolin in Hart county but that is about 4 hours by car. Not too local either huh?

Looks pretty limiting for the high fire potter but it is a challenge that I would like to attempt.
I have good sources for ash, earthenwares, and limestone. The major thing I need is a source for high fire clay. I guess since that will be the base which all pots are built on it should be the main focus of my prospecting. Time to check up on a few leads I guess.

On a related note, I bought a new book off Ebay and recently had reason to actually read it. I ran across a potter who had lots of wood ash on hand. I bought a couple of buckets from her and started reading "Ash Glazes" by Phil Rogers.

If I haven't said it before, I LOVE his work.

I'm in the process of Washing the ash right now. It is a mixture of hard and softwood ash so I imagine it will make a celadon type glaze when mixed with whiter types of clay. It will be fun to experiment with.

I also have several hundred pounds of earthen ware from a local construction site that I will be using with the ash. Not sure of the iron content but it fires with similar results to redart and that would put the iron at about 7%. It won't be making any white glazes with that clay but it could be used to source iron for a celadon if I can find another low iron clay locally.

My next prospecting adventure will be to the Tyrone power station in search of Fly ash. I contacted the local electric utility and they pointed me towards the local coal burning power station. Fly ash is the portion of coal left after burning that is light enough to be carried away on the draft of the furnace. They have to filter the stuff out of their exhause so they should have TONS on hand. I hope that it will require little to no milling for use. Once again though it usually has pretty high iron content (about 10%) so its use will be limited.

I'd love to hear from anyone interested in this idea as I'm sure there are materials that I have not considered.