WICHITA FORMATION OF NORTHERN TEXAS 115 



thickness appear at the top of the escarpment on the west side of 

 Horseshoe Lake, and outcrops of these appear at intervals along 

 the boundary of Archer and Baylor counties. This limestone is 

 earthy, very hard, dark blue where fresh, and weathers to dark 

 brown or black. It is underlain by 4 feet of blue clay. The 

 remainder of the section to the base of the hill, about 100 feet, 

 consists of red concretion-bearing clays with a limited development 

 of red and white shaly sandstone. From this point westward the 

 stratification becomes more regular, consisting of the blue shales 

 alternating with the red, the red being predominant, with an occa- 

 sional bed of dark earthy limestone containing usually an abun- 

 dance of poorly preserved fossils. 



At the Bar-X ranch on the Wichita River in the northeast cor- 

 ner of Baylor County near the Old Military Crossing, several ledges 

 of hard limestone appear in the river bluffs separated by varying 

 thicknesses of blue shale, alternating with red clay. The beds 

 dip to the westward at inclinations estimated at 20 to 30 feet per 

 mile. Proceeding up the river from this point, limestones appear 

 at intervals in increasing development, the best outcrops occurring 

 about 2 miles east of where the Seymour- Vernon road crosses the 

 river. Here an escarpment 90 feet in height has the lower two- 

 thirds composed of red and blue shales alternating with beds of 

 limestone. The middle of the section consists of red and concre- 

 tionary clays and sandstones. Some of the ledges of limestone 

 are massive, but others are thin-bedded and shaly, and separated 

 by varying thicknesses of bluish clay. Locally the thin-bedded 

 limestones and their included shale grade horizontally into more 

 massively bedded limestones. Fossils are not plentiful in this 

 locality. The same beds are exposed again northward in the 

 banks of Beaver Creek. At Seymour the limestones are well 

 exposed in the banks of the river where they are quarried to some 

 extent and furnish a stone that is well adapted to ordinary uses. 

 The beds are here transected by the Salt Fork of the Brazos River, 

 which flows in a relatively narrow valley between steep bluffs 200 

 feet high, made up of interbedded red and blue clays, and lime- 

 stones. 



The limestones of Baylor County area are generally fossil- 



