Seventy years ago the renowned geologist P. B. King recognized that the Sierra Madera structure was a different breed of cat. The circular cluster of hills is 1.5 miles in diameter. Older strata are exposed in the central part and strata generally dip radially away from the center. Permian rocks are uplifted as much as 4000 feet in the central uplift.
Cretaceous rocks dip gently away from the central uplift and form the outer rim of the structure.
However, it is not a simple, structural dome because the bedding is also highly folded and faulted on the small scale. Many domal structures to the south have igneous rocks associated with them, but Sierra Madera does not. Oil companies are attracted to structural domes, or 'four ways of dip,' and Sierra Madera was no exception. Robert Dietz suggested that the Sierra Madera structure might be the result of a meteorite impact. Howard Wilshire studied the area and showed that shatter cones and micro-breccias indicated extremely high pressures of 200 kilobars.