 |
The Caprock | |
|---|---|
Region | |
| Coordinates: 34°26′15″N101°04′01″W / 34.4376°N 101.0669°W | |
| Country | United States of America |
| State | Texas |
| Time zone | UTC-6:00 (CST) |
| • Summer (DST) | UTC-5:00 (CDT) |
The Caprock is a region in the Panhandle of Texas (USA). It is the land to the west of the Caprock Escarpment, which separates it from plains stretching to the east at a much lower elevation.
Quitaque is a city in southeastern Briscoe County, Texas, United States. The town lies directly south of Caprock Canyon State Park and is a ranching and farming area in West Texas. The population was 342 at the 2020 census, and 411 at the 2010 census.
The Texas panhandle is a region of the U.S. state of Texas consisting of the northernmost 26 counties in the state. The panhandle is a square-shaped area bordered by New Mexico to the west and Oklahoma to the north and east. It is adjacent to the Oklahoma Panhandle, land which Texas previously claimed. The 1820 Missouri Compromise declared no slavery would be allowed in states admitted from the Louisiana Purchase above 36°30′ north latitude. Texas was annexed in 1845 from still more westerly land. The Compromise of 1850 removed territory north of this line from Texas, and set the border between the Texas Panhandle and the New Mexico Territory at the 103rd meridian west. The eastern border at the 100th meridian west was inherited from the Adams–Onís Treaty of 1819, which defined the border between the United States and New Spain. The Handbook of Texas defines the southern border of Swisher County as the southern boundary of the Texas Panhandle region.
In geomorphology, a butte is an isolated hill with steep, often vertical sides and a small, relatively flat top; buttes are smaller landforms than mesas, plateaus, and tablelands. The word butte comes from the French word butte, meaning knoll ; its use is prevalent in the Western United States, including the southwest where mesa is used for the larger landform. Due to their distinctive shapes, buttes are frequently landmarks in plains and mountainous areas. To differentiate the two landforms, geographers use the rule of thumb that a mesa has a top that is wider than its height, while a butte has a top that is narrower than its height.
A mesa is an isolated, flat-topped elevation, ridge or hill, which is bounded from all sides by steep escarpments and stands distinctly above a surrounding plain. Mesas characteristically consist of flat-lying soft sedimentary rocks capped by a more resistant layer or layers of harder rock, e.g. shales overlain by sandstones. The resistant layer acts as a caprock that forms the flat summit of a mesa. The caprock can consist of either sedimentary rocks such as sandstone and limestone; dissected lava flows; or a deeply eroded duricrust. Unlike plateau, whose usage does not imply horizontal layers of bedrock, e.g. Tibetan Plateau, the term mesa applies exclusively to the landforms built of flat-lying strata. Instead, flat-topped plateaus are specifically known as tablelands.
A cuesta is a hill or ridge with a gentle slope on one side, and a steep slope on the other. In geology the term is more specifically applied to a ridge where a harder sedimentary rock overlies a softer layer, the whole being tilted somewhat from the horizontal. This results in a long and gentle backslope called a dip slope that conforms with the dip of resistant strata, called caprock. Where erosion has exposed the frontslope of this, a steep slope or escarpment occurs. The resulting terrain may be called scarpland.
The South Plains is a region in northwest Texas, consisting of 24 counties. The main crop is cotton.
A dip slope is a topographic (geomorphic) surface which slopes in the same direction, and often by the same amount, as the true dip or apparent dip of the underlying strata. A dip slope consists of the upper surface of a resistant layer of rock, often called caprock, that is commonly only slightly lowered and reduced in steepness by erosion. Dip slopes form the backslopes of cuestas, homoclinal ridges, hogbacks, and flatirons. The frontslopes of such ridges consist of either an escarpment, a steep slope, or perhaps even a line of cliffs. Generally, cuestas and homoclinal ridges are asymmetrical in that their dip slopes are less steep than their escarpments. In the case of hogbacks and flatirons, the dip of the rocks is so steep that their dip slope approaches the escarpment in their steepness.
The Caprock Escarpment is a term used in West Texas and Eastern New Mexico to describe the geographical transition point between the level High Plains of the Llano Estacado and the surrounding rolling terrain.
Caprock Canyons State Park and Trailway is a Texas state park located along the eastern edge of the Llano Estacado in Briscoe County, Texas, United States, approximately 100 miles (160 km) southeast of Amarillo. The state park opened in 1982 and is 15,314 acres (6,197 ha) in size, making it the third-largest state park in Texas.
Eastern New Mexico is a physiographic subregion within the U.S. state of New Mexico. The region is sometimes called the "High Plains," or "Eastern Plains ," and was historically referred to as part of the "Great American Desert". The region is largely coterminous with the portion of the Llano Estacado in New Mexico. Portions of Eastern New Mexico's elevation extend to over 4,000 ft (1,200 m). The region is characterized by flat, largely featureless terrain with the exception of the Pecos River valley and the abrupt breaks along the Mescalero Ridge and northern caprock escarpments of the Llano Estacado. The region typically lacks the high relief of central and northern New Mexico, such as that in the Sangre de Cristo and Sandia mountain ranges. The climate is semi-arid with hot summers and is characterized by significant wind and dust storms in the springtime.
Caprock High School is located in Amarillo, Texas in Potter, County, which is part of the Texas Panhandle. Caprock is one of four high schools in the Amarillo Independent School District and classified as a 5A school by the UIL. Caprock was built in 1964 and celebrated its 50th graduating class in 2014. In 2015, the school was rated "Met Standard" by the Texas Education Agency.
Caprock is an unincorporated community in Lea County, New Mexico, United States. Caprock is located on a geological formation in the high plains, approximately 47 miles (76 km) east of Roswell. U.S. Route 380 passes through the community. It was founded by Edward Crossland, who planted the cottonwoods in the area, in 1913. A post office was established in 1916 but is closed. Caprock's school closed in 1927. Caprock today consists solely of a country store, two ranches, and a TV transmission tower. The ZIP Code for Caprock is 88213.
KOBR is a television station licensed to Roswell, New Mexico, United States, affiliated with NBC. It is a satellite of Albuquerque-based KOB which is owned by Hubbard Broadcasting. KOBR's transmitter is located near Caprock, New Mexico.
Castlewood Canyon State Park is a Colorado state park near Franktown, Colorado. The park retains a unique part of Colorado's history, the remains of Castlewood Canyon Dam. Visitors can still see the remnants and damage from that dam which burst in 1933. The event sent a 15-foot (5 m) wave of water all the way to downtown Denver resulting in a flood. Also contained within the park is the historic Cherry Creek Bridge.
Caprock or cap rock is a more resistant rock type overlying a less resistant rock type, analogous to an upper crust on a cake that is harder than the underlying layer.
In petroleum geology, a trap is a geological structure affecting the reservoir rock and caprock of a petroleum system allowing the accumulation of hydrocarbons in a reservoir. Traps can be of two types: stratigraphic or structural. Structural traps are the most important type of trap as they represent the majority of the world's discovered petroleum resources.
KBZO-LD is a low-power television station licensed to Lubbock, Texas, United States, affiliated with Univision. Owned by Entravision Communications, the station maintains studios on Caprock Drive in Lubbock and a transmitter on University Avenue just outside Loop 289.
The Caprock Chief or Caprock Xpress was a proposed Amtrak inter-city rail service which would run from Fort Worth, Texas, to Denver, Colorado, passing through the Texas Panhandle, which currently does not have passenger rail service of any kind. Initially proposed 2000–2001, the project has not yet seen significant progress and is unlikely to be implemented. "Caprock" is a geological term for a harder or more resistant rock type overlying a weaker or less resistant rock type, and lends its name to the Caprock Escarpment that defines the edge of the high plains of the Llano Estacado.
Scarp retreat is a geological process through which the location of an escarpment changes over time. Typically the cliff is undermined, rocks fall and form a talus slope, the talus is chemically or mechanically weathered and then removed through water or wind erosion, and the process of undermining resumes. Scarps may retreat for tens of kilometers in this way over relatively short geological time spans, even in arid locations.
The Shinarump Conglomerate is a geologic formation found in the Four Corners region of the United States. It was deposited in the early part of the Late Triassic period.
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