128 H. F. BAIN — GEOLOGY OF THE WICHITA MOUNTAINS 



In the course of the work the author had the constant and valuable 

 assistance of Mr J. \V. Finch, to whom he is indebted for many facts of 

 observations and suggestions of value. He is also in debt to Professor 

 R. I). Salisbury for private notes collected on a reconnoissance trip earlier 

 in the present year. Permission to publish the results is generously 

 given by General Manager H. A. Parker, of the Chicago, Rock Island 

 and Pacific railroad, under whose direction the work was done. 



Previous Work in the Region 



The " Wichitas " are a detached group of mountains of general east- 

 west trend located within the Kiowa and Comanche reservation, in 

 southwestern Oklahoma. They are not withi-n the area open to settle- 

 ment, and perhaps in part for this reason have long been attractive to 

 the prospector. They have never been geologically survej^ed in detail, 

 though several geologists have made reconnoissance trips through the 

 region. The first of these was George G. Shumard, who was attached to 

 Marcy's expedition to the sources of the Red river in 1852.* The spec- 

 imens collected by this expedition were studied by Edward Hitchcock,! 

 and chemical analyses of the ores and soils were made by C. U. Shep- 

 herd.]; In 1889 Messrs T. B. Comstock and W. F. Cummings, of the 

 Texas Geological Survey, made a trip through the mountains, and their 

 results are given in the First Texas Report.§ This is the only geological 

 paper especiall} 7 devoted to the Wichitas which we have had up to the 

 present. There have, however, been several brief papers dealing with 

 the Wichitas in connection with neighboring areas. Among them is a 

 paper published by T. Wayland Vaughan last July.|| The latter 

 paper includes petrographic notes by Doctor A. C. Spencer. Robert T. 

 Hill determined the height of mount Scott,!] and has made several inci- 

 dental references to the geology of the region.** 



( iimmings and Comstock devoted more time to the area than any pre- 

 vious investigators, but their opinions seem to have been very largel} 7 

 colored by what the}' had previously seen in central Texas. The pres- 

 ent work has shown that they are fundamentally wrong in referring the 

 granite to the pre-Cambrian, since it cuts and metamorphoses Ordovician 

 strata. They are also clearly mistaken in indorsing Hitchcock's ff opin- 



* Senate Doc, 2d sess., 3lst Congress, vol. 8, Washington, 1853, Appendix D. 



•j-Op. cit. 



t Op. cit., Appendix C. 



gGeol. Survey Texas, vol. i, pp. 319-328. 



|| Amer. Geologist, vol. xxiv, 1899, pp. 44-57. 



' [bid., vol. vii, 1891, p. 119. 



** [bid., vol. vii, p. 254; vol. vi, pp. 252-253. Amer. Jour. Sei., (3), vol. xlii, 1891, pp. 122-123. 



tfOeol. Survey Texas, vol. i, p. 321. 



