PHYSIOGRAPHY 133 



and the range of porphyry hills, including Medicine bluff, and called the 

 Charlton mountains by Comstock, pierce this valley from the southeast 

 with a series of elevations of decreasing height and extending as far west 

 as the longitude of mount Sheridan. South of the porphyry hills is the 

 main granite mass of the south range. This begins in an outlying bunch 

 of hills east of Beaver Creek pass and extend unbroken westward to the 

 broad pass north of Quana Parkers, a Comanche chief living on West 

 Cache creek. About 2 miles east of Quanas the range throws out a long 

 low spur to the south. West from Quanas the mountains are unbroken 

 to the Mesquite valley, already described. The intermontane valley is 

 more and more broken by mountains to the west until it becomes too 

 obscure for recognition, and the mountains face the Mesquite valley 

 along the eastern edge in a practically unbroken range. 



West of Mesquite valley and extending to the Red river is a group of 

 detached peaks known locally as the Raggedy mountains. Otter creek 

 flows through them and at two points on its course cuts gorges known 

 as the Upper and Lower narrows. The former is located in township 4 

 north, range 17 west, and latter in the southern portion of the first town- 

 ship south of this. Iron mountain, as located by Vaughan, is one of the 

 peaks lying northeast of the Upper narrows, and Round mountain would 

 lie west of them, in the region where there has been so much surrep- 

 titious prospecting. 



Rocks Present 



The rocks forming the Wichita mountains include granites, gabbros, 

 and porphyries in their various phases, and a series of Cambrian and 

 Ordovician sediments, principally limestones. The oldest rocks in the 

 region are the Raggedy Mountain gabbro and the Carrollton Mountain 

 porphyry. The relations of the two are not certain beyond dispute, but 

 apparently the gabbro is the older. In a general way the gabbro is more 

 prominent in the western portion of the mountains, being especially well 

 developed in the Raggedy mountains, while the porphyry is more common 

 in the east. Both are pre-Cambrian and perhaps Archean. These rocks 

 formed an old land-mass or island around which the sediments were laid 

 down. The latter begin with a conglomerate carrying fragments of 

 porphyry and gabbro, but none of granite, and run up through the 

 quartzose sandstone, calcareous sandstone, and arenaceous limestones of 

 the Blue Creek series, and so into the Rainy Mountain limestone proper. 

 At its base the series carries definite Cambrian fossils, and higher up 

 Ordovician (Lower Silurian) fossils are found. Allowing for dip and 

 faults, a thickness of a trifle over 4,000 feet of these beds is exposed. 



