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TEXAS Guadalupe Peak 7 ½’ quadrangle: Guadalupe Peak, TX Culberson County Guadalupe Mountains National Park Guadalupe Mountains, Southern Rocky Mountains
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Sedimentary 8,749 ft (2,667 m) |
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| Bedrock: Carlsbad Limestone | Permian | ||
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Rocks at the summit are at the top of the type section for the Guadalupe Series of the Permian. The Carlsbad is a carbonate shelf facies, light gray- or cream-colored, thin-bedded limestone, with abundant pisolites (rounded algal structures) and fossils coated by concentric algal layers. The Carlsbad passes downward and southeasternward into thicker-bedded Capitan Limestone, a reef facies, with abundant brachipods, gastropods, pelecypods, nautiloids and trilobites. However, sponges, algae and crinoids dominate the fauna. Below that lie deeper-water sandstones and limestones of the Delaware Mountains. The reef facies of this series is the major oil-producing reservoir rock where buried in the basins of Texas and nearby states. Along the west side of the Guadalupe Mountains, the same section is dropped down about 4000 feet along a major normal fault system.
Surficial Geology: Quaternary alluvial fan gravels (fanglomerates) extend from the mountains out into the Salt Basin. Lacustrine clays and gypsum deposits lie farther west. Soil Series: No soil survey has been published for this county.
Selected References: King, Philip B., 1948, Geology of the southern Guadalupe Mountains, Texas, U.S. Professional Paper 215, 183p.
Other suggested sources of information: |
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