The Geologic Story of the Great Plains / A nontechnical description of the origin and evolution of the landscape of the Great Plains

by Donald E. Trimble

EDWARDS PLATEAU

South of the Pecos Valley section, the Pecos River continues its journey to the Rio Grande in a steep-walled canyon cut 400 to 500 feet below the level of a plateau surface of Cretaceous limestone from which little has been stripped except a thin Tertiary cover of Ogallala Formation ([fig. 30]). To the east, the plateau has been similarly incised by the Devils River and the West Nueces and Nueces Rivers. East of the Nueces to the escarpment formed by the Balcones fault zone, the southern part of the Edwards Plateau has been intricately dissected by the Frio, Sabinal, Medina, Guadalupe, and Pedernales Rivers and their tributary systems. San Antonio and Austin, Tex., are located on the Coastal Plain at the edge of the Balcones fault zone.

Figure 30.—Rio Grande and the flat-lying limestone layers of the Edwards Plateau downstream from the mouth of the Pecos River. Mexico on the left side of picture. Photograph by V. L. Freeman, U. S. Geological Survey.

The Pecos River, and to a lesser extent the Devils and Nueces Rivers, particularly in their lower courses, have entrenched themselves deeply in the plateau in remarkable meandering courses of a type that is usually found only in broad, low-lying floodplains. These stream courses reflect the stream environment prior to regional uplift.

Sinkholes pit the relatively undissected limestone plateau surface in the northeast part of the Edwards Plateau, and some underground solution cavities in the limestone are well-known caves, such as the Caverns of Sonora, southwest of Sonora, Tex.

Oil and gas fields are widely developed in the northern part of the Edwards Plateau, but only cattle ranches are found in the bare southern part.

Ancient oceans deposited the limestones that now cap the Edwards Plateau; streams planed off the surface of the flat-lying limestone layers and entrenched themselves in steep-walled valleys; and ground water dissolved the limestone and created the solution cavities that are the caves and sinks of the Edwards Plateau. Water has created this landscape.