Item talk:Q130640

Preliminary geologic map of the Beautiful Mountain anticline, San Juan County, New Mexico

The Beautiful Mountain anticline is on the Navajo Indian Reservation in western San Juan County, N. Mex., near the Arizona-New Mexico State line; it lies along tbe western side of the Chuska Valley at the foot of the Chuska Mountains. Most of the area of this report is characterized by low, sharp relief. Beautiful Mountain, a buttelike outlier of the Chuska Mountains, contrasts strikingly with the otherwise low relief of the area--it rises above the western flank of the anticline to an alutude of nearly 9,000 feet. The general form of the partly breached anticlinal structure is expressed in the topography sharply delineated cuestas, mesas, buttes, and promontories, all capped by the resistant sandstone beds of the Tocito sandstone lentil of rhe Mancos shale. This report shows the distribution and thickness of the sedimentary rocks exposed in the area of the Beautiful Mountain anticline and the conformation of the anticline as represented by structure contours drawn on the top of the Dakota sandstone.