Geology of southern Quitman Mountains and vicinity Hudspeth County, Texas

The Quitman Mountains are part of a narrow mountain range that extends from Sierra Blanca, Texas, (85 miles southeast of El Paso, Texas) into northern Mexico. The range is typical of many desert mountains in the southwestern United States in that it projects abruptly above the relatively flat valleys that border it. The 12,000 feet of Cretaceous strata exposed in the area range from Necomian (?) to Turonian, inclusive. The deposition of these rocks appears to have been essentially continuous. Changes in composition within the sequence are probably the result of fluctuations of the shoreline during the general northeastward advance of the Cretaceous sea from the Chihuahua trough onto the Diablo platform. The Cretaceous strata are divisible into nine formations. These formations are from oldest to youngest: Mountain Formation, Quitman Formation, Cox Formation, Finlay Limestone, Benevides Formation, Espy Formation, Eagle Mountains Formation, Buda Limestone, and the Ojinaga Formation. ..