Excerpt from The Geology of the Western Buckskin Mountains, Yuma County, Arizona

Western Arizona is a part of that semi-arid region, the Lower Colorado Basin, one of the large physiographic provinces of the United States. To-day many of its portions remain blank upon the geologic map, and other parts are known only from reconnaissance surveys. The basement complex of granites, gneisses, porphyries, pegmatites and metamorphosed sediments is as yet unsolved as to origin or relationship to other Precambrian and Algonkian rocks in Arizona and the conditions in Paleozoic time have still to receive a more detailed solution. The Mesozoic is largely a matter of conjecture and it is nut until the Tertiary and Quaternary strata arc reached that the region affords the necessary data for a satisfactory explanation of the conditions which existed. The economic resources have been the subject of some study and there is perhaps little to he added to the general knowledge in this particular. Besides gold, silver, copper, lead and mercury there is also the western type of hematite ores, whose genesis has been the subject of several recent investigations in different parts of the western United States.

This paper was prepared with the idea that a detailed study of any part of this region might perhaps add something to the knowledge of it. The rocks of the western part of the Buckskin Mountains, their relations to certain hematite deposits, and physiographic observations form the subject of the investigation.

Previous Literature:

The Whipple expedition in 1853 made the first official report upon the region, hut was not concerned with its geology. Jules Marcou, Thomas Antisell and William P. Blake were the first geologists to give an account of the Lower Colorado Basin. They were attached to the Pacific Railroad expedition in 1854-56. Benjamin Silliman and W. P. Blake in these early days contributed papers to the American Journal of Science, recording some of their observations.

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