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### Geology of the Southern Guadalupe Mountains, Texas

#### Professional Paper 215

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#### Links

- More information: **National Geologic Map Database Index Page**     
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- Document: **Document**                                
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- Plates:
- **Plate 2**                                
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- **Plate 3**                                
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- **Plate 6**                                
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- **Plate 7**                                
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- **Plate 8**                                
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- **Plate 9**                                
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- **Plate 13**                                
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- **Plate 15**                                
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- **Plate 17**                                
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- **Plate 20**                                
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- **Plate 21**                                
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- **Plate 22**                                
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- **Plate 23**                                
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- Download citation as:  RIS

#### Abstract

This report deals with an area of 425 square miles in the western part of 
Texas, immediately south of the New Mexico line. The area comprises the south 
end of the Guadalupe Mountains and the adjacent part of the Delaware Mountains; 
it includes the highest peaks in the State of Texas. The area is a segment of a 
large mountain mass that extends 50 miles or more northward and southward. The 
report describes the geology of the area, that is, the nature of its rocks, 
tectonics, and surface features, and the evidence that they give as to the 
evolution of the area through geologic time. Incidental reference is made to the 
geology of surrounding regions in order to place the area in its environment.

The Permian system of the southwestern United States has been until recently 
one of the intriguing but little known subjects of American stratigraphy. In the 
latter half of the nineteenth century after the western. United States was 
settled, the "red bed" sections of the Permian were studied and reported on by 
many geologists, but up to 1920 the existence of a contemporaneous marine 
sequence in western Texas and southeastern New Mexico was little appreciated. 
Since that year the discovery of extensive oil fields and potash beds in this 
region gave an impetus to the study of the Permian rocks, and furnished the 
geologist with records of hundreds of drill holes from which to deduce the 
nature of the strata not exposed at the surface. At the same time geologists 
have studied the rocks in the outcropping areas, and have compared them with the 
strata encountered by drilling.

Much remains to be done in order to understand the history of Permian time in 
the region. The physical and chemical conditions that caused. the deposition of 
.the various and often complexly related deposits need to be better understood. 
More of the fossils of the rich and interesting marine faunas should be 
described, and the relations of the fossils to their environments should be 
determined. Further, a satisfactory scheme of correlation is needed, and also a 
subdivision into series that will express the contemporaneity of strata in 
different areas. One useful contribution to the solution of these problems is 
the detailed study of sequences of rocks exposed at the surface in the different 
mountain ranges of Texas and New Mexico.

This report deals with one such sequence of rocks in western Texas, the one 
exposed in the southern Guadalupe Mountains (fig. 1). Here, the Permian rocks 
are magnificently exposed, to a thickness of about 4,000 feet (pl. 1). They are 
all of marine origin, and belong to the middle part of the system, with the base 
concealed and the top absent. Overlying and underlying beds, however, are found 
in nearby areas.

#### Study Area



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