Geological Survey Bulletin 845 Guidebook of the Western United States: Part F. Southern Pacific Lines

SHEET No. 15 (click in image for an enlargement in a new window)

The famous short-cut "smugglers' trail," which came from the Rio Grande, passed around the foot of Mount Ranger (now called Twin Peak), just west of Alpine and down Alpine Creek. The Davis Mountains, west and north of Alpine, were a great resort for the Indians, so that in 1854 Fort Davis (named for Jefferson Davis) was established at a point 20 miles northwest of Alpine. At this post food supplies and forage for horses were obtained with difficulty, so Mexican cattle were smuggled in from the great haciendas in Mexico to supply the troops at Fort Davis and Fort Stockton. In 1855 Secretary of War Jefferson Davis had camels introduced into this region as a means of transportation, but as they did not prove satisfactory to frontiersmen accustomed to horses and mules, they were turned loose and finally died in the Big Bend country. In 1854 the Government let a contract for monthly mail service between San Antonio and Santa Fe by way of El Paso in two-horse coaches, through in 25 days. The compensation was set at $16,750, but Indian depredations led Congress to increase this to $33,500. In 1857 another contract was signed for fortnightly mail between San Antonio and San Diego for $149,800. Two years later this line was costing the Government nearly $200,000 a year, with receipts of $601. The trip was about 1,500 miles long, consumed 22 to 26 days, and cost the traveler $200 with meals. Indians constantly attacked mail carriers and emigrants, the trail from San Antonio to El Paso being described as one long battleground. When the Civil War broke out Fort Davis was occupied by Confederates, but soon it was deserted and the entire Big Bend country was left to the Indians. After the Civil War Fort Davis was enlarged and reoccupied as an Army post until 1891. The region is now famous for its cool summer climate, fine fruit, and thoroughbred Hereford cattle.

It was intended to build the Southern Pacific Railroad through Fort Davis, but difficulty in obtaining a right of way led to its location farther south, through Paisano Gap.

Three miles west of Alpine the railroad enters a gorge in the volcanic rocks that constitute the Davis Mountains. These rocks are in a succession of thick sheets lying nearly horizontal or dipping at low angles (as shown in fig. 14 and pl. 14, A.) At the base, in this part of the area, is a massive bed of agglomerate, probably the result of a great mud flow during an eruption. It consists of huge fragments of lava, mostly angular, mixed with finer volcanic material. There are many irregular erosion forms, notably Mitre Peak, shown in Plate 13, C. A large quarry for road ballast at Toronto siding shows a contact of two volcanic flows. South of the track, beyond Toronto, is the very high conical mass of Paisano Peak. It has a crater-form bowl in the top strongly suggestive of the remains of an old crater, and doubtless it was the vent of one or more of the great outbursts of lava that covered all the surrounding country.⁶⁸ Several dikes of dark-colored igneous rock crossed by the railroad west of this peak represent cracks up which lava welled to feed some of the later outflows. In this region numerous live oaks and a few junipers give a very pleasing effect to the landscape, and there is considerable grass, which sustains many cattle. A typical view on one of the large pastures in the mountains is given in Plate 14, A. The approach to Paisano Pass is shown in Plate 14, B.

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⁶⁸These rocks are all in extensive sheets which have been tilted, flexed, and faulted to some extent and considerably eroded. The materials are mostly soda trachyte, in places underlain by soda rhyolite and agglomerate. Soda rhyolite, conspicuous on Sunny Brook and at the foot of Twin Mountains west of Alpine, consists of phenocrysts of orthoclase in a groundmass of albite and quartz, as determined by C. S. Ross, of the United States Geological Survey.

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PLATE 14. A (top), LAVA AND TUFF OF DAVIS MOUNTAINS, WEST OF ALPINE, TEX. Typical herd of Hereford cattle in foreground. B (bottom), APPROACHING PAISANO PASS THROUGH DAVIS MOUNTAINS, BETWEEN ALPINE AND MARFA, TEX. Looking east.

In a pretty grove of live oaks a few miles beyond Toronto siding on the south side of the track is a Baptist camp-meeting ground, where each year large numbers gather from all quarters for a week of instruction and recreation. Another great camp-meeting ground, nondenominational and operated without charge to those attending, is at Skillman's grove, a few miles west of Fort Davis or north of Marfa, in a park among the volcanic peaks of the central part of the Davis Mountains. This grove was named for the man who first carried the monthly mail from San Antonio to El Paso and return.

At Paisano siding,⁶⁹ in the divide on the Davis Mountains, the railroad reaches its highest elevation, near the western margin of the older volcanic lavas, which in this vicinity are mostly trachyte, as in the region about Alpine. Just west of the siding the railroad descends wide into a valley occupied by alluvium, doubtless underlain by volcanic rocks. A few rods beyond Paisano a line of the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway system, which uses the Southern Pacific tracks from Alpine, here diverges to the south on the way to Presidio, on the Rio Grande, where it connects with a railroad to Chihuahua, Mexico. Tall yuccas, which become abundant in this area, extend far on the plains to the west. Near Marfa and westward nearly to Aragon siding lavas and tuffs are exposed along or near the railroad.

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⁶⁹A dike near Paisano consists of a peculiar fine-grained dacite which has been named "paisanite" by Osann. Its components are mainly feldspar, hornblende, and quartz, with a tendency to granophyric structure. Apparently it was an outlet or feeder for one of the volcanic flows in the vicinity. Some distance south of Paisano is Cienega Mountain, which contains a mass of marble of good quality that has been quarried to some extent. It is limestone of Comanche age altered to marble by the heat of a large intrusive mass, which constitutes most of the mountain. This mass is a soda trachyte composed of sodic plagioclase and iron oxides similar to some of the great lava flows in the region about Alpine.

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Marfa is a small city of about the same size and character as Alpine, a local center for stock and other interests and the county seat of Presidio County since 1885. On the southern edge of the city is Fort D. A. Russell, where a regiment of 578 men and 37 officers is garrisoned. An important function of this station is military training for recruits.

The Chihuahua Trail, which crossed the Rio Grande, at Presidio, came up Alamito Creek, passed through Antelope Spring, south of Marfa, followed Paisano Pass to Alpine, and went north to Fort Stockton, where it connected with other trails east. Over it ore from the mines of western Mexico was hauled in wooden-wheeled carts by Texas teamsters to San Antonio and thence taken to the coast to be shipped to Europe. One trader in five years transported in this way a million dollars' worth of freshly minted Mexican silver. It is still believed that silver and other valuable commodities were buried along this route to conceal them from outlaws or Indians.

West from Marfa the railroad follows a west-northwest course over a rolling country of lavas (basalt) and waterlaid tuffs. Low mesas to the south are capped by lava (basalt). Near Aragon siding the railroad passes over a low, wide divide leading into Ryan Flat, at the head of the broad valley of Chispa Creek. Far to the south may be seen the high Chinati Peak (che-nah'tee), which is due to an isolated intrusive mass. To the north are the Davis Mountains, consisting of high ridges and peaks of igneous rocks of the Tertiary volcanic succession. At Conejo siding (co-nay'ho) the railroad deflects somewhat into a 40-mile tangent extending nearly due northwest down the broad alluvial valley of Chispa Creek. The region has but little vegetation other than grass and is a prosperous stock country, mostly divided into ranches of large area.

Valentine is a small village sustained mostly by stock raising on the large ranches in the surrounding district. There is no agriculture in the region, for the annual rainfall averages only about 11 inches. The village is on the wide alluvial plain of Chispa Creek, which flows northwest into Salt Basin. About 12 miles to the east are the Davis Mountains, and to the west is the high wall of the Tierra Vieja Range (ve-ay'ha), which consists of a succession of lava flows. Lavas also constitute outlying ridges in the valley beyond Valentine, as well as to the Southwest of that place. Twenty miles to the south is the prominent Capote Peak, due to a thick cap of lava on tuffs dipping steeply eastward. Just west of this feature is a break in the range, through which passes the road to Candelaria and other points on the Rio Grande far south of the railroad at Valentine. Near the gap is the famous Brite ranch, established in 1885. It comprises about 225,000 acres with 65 miles of pipe lines for water supply and has a large herd of thoroughbred Hereford cattle. It was raided by Mexican outlaws in 1917, so that a fort with a powerful search light has been built, a novel feature in present ranch life. In this vicinity some rock ledges bear Indian inscriptions and pictographs of animals and people which are so deeply weathered that there can be no question as to their antiquity.

In 1931 Valentine experienced a severe earthquake, which demolished or damaged many buildings and twisted chimneys and grave stones. Apparently the settlement was near the center of the disturbance, which may have been caused by renewed movement on some of the faults that traverse the region to the south and north. The direction of the principal line of disturbance was nearly due south.

North of Wendell siding are ridges presenting a variety of rocks, mostly lavas, but also exposures of limestones and sandstones of the Trinity group (Lower Cretaceous) and a small outcrop of limestone of Permian age, which was quarried to a small extent as marble.⁷⁰ The alteration from limestone to marble has been caused by the intrusion of an igneous mass.

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⁷⁰In the region west of Valentine strata of Cretaceous age appear in many ridges and mesas, as described by Taff, Richardson, Stanton, and Baker. They are listed in the following table:

Lower Cretaceous (Comanche) formations in western Texas

Group	Formation	Character	Thickness (feet)
Washita.	Buda limestone	Limestone, massive, light colored	30
	Del Rio clay	Buff clay, sandstone layers	100-300
	Georgetown limestone	Massive limestone, marl at base locally	100-550
Fredericksburg.	Edwards limestone	Limestone, massive	50-600
	Comanche Peak limestone	Limestone, slabby	80+
	Walnut clay	Clay, sandstone, and impure limestone	30+
Trinity.	Finlay limestone	Limestone, mostly massive	400
	Cox sandstone	Sandstone, brown, some shale and limestone and local conglomerate.	500-2,000
	Campagrande formation	Sandstone and conglomerate	250-800

The coarse sandstones and conglomerates (Campagrande formation) at the base of the Trinity lie unconformably on the Malone formation (Upper Jurassic), and are at least 250 feet thick on the northern flank of the Quitman Mountains. The Cox sandstone, which makes up many of the high ridges near the railroad, is 1,500 feet thick in the eastern part of the Van Horn Mountains, about 2,000 feet thick in the southern part of the Quitman Mountains, and about 1,000 feet thick in the northern part of the Eagle Mountains. It consists largely of brown sandstone but includes beds of limestone and shale and local members of conglomerate. The overlying Finlay limestone is conspicuous about the Sierra Blanca and makes up the plateau extending northwest from the Finlay Mountains, the front of which is conspicuous north of Fort Hancock. It is regarded as a formation of the Trinity group on the evidence of the fossils Exogyra quitmanensis and Orbitulina texana. The Edwards limestone is only 25 feet thick in the Van Horn Mountains and about Sierra Blanca but thickens greatly toward the south in the canyons along the Rio Grande. The overlying Georgetown limestone also thickens to the southeast and is generally overlain by Del Rio clay and Buda limestone. The Upper Cretaceous begins with a basal sandstone at most places and has a thick succession of shales with slabby limestone representing the Eagle Ford. These beds are well exposed in the southern and western parts of the Van Horn Mountains, at the southeast end of the Quitman Mountains, and northwest of the Eagle Mountains. Representatives of the overlying Austin and Taylor beds are also present, overlain by deposits of fresh-water origin in which local coal beds are included. The later part of the Cretaceous system, as explained above, is represented by sandstones and shales with interbedded volcanic tuffs and flows, the beginning of the great volcanic succession.

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Near Quebec siding there are fine views of high ranges from 10 to 20 miles away. Those to the west are the Tierra Vieja Mountains,⁷¹ and those to the north and east the higher summits of the Davis Mountains. The highest point of the Davis Mountains is Livermore Peak, named from a major in the United States Army, who first measured its height in 1880, when he was returning from a raid on the Apache marauders. This peak is 8,382 feet above sea level and is a part of a central intrusive mass that extends northwest to Sawtooth Peak. The succession of volcanic rocks in this region has not yet been determined, but it has a thickness of several thousand feet and presents a variety of lavas, agglomerates, and tuffs, and numerous feeder dikes and stocks by which the volcanic materials reached the surface.

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⁷¹The Tierra Vieja Mountains consist of a succession of lavas and volcanic tuffs and breccias with interbedded conglomerates, sandstones, and clays, more than 2,000 feet thick, of Tertiary age. The lavas range from obsidian to a rook of porphyritic character. One flow about 300 feet thick of the very rare volcanic rock quartz pantellerite constitutes a cliff or "rim rock," at the crest of the mountains, which presents a steep front to the west. The strata and lava sheets dip to the southeast at a low angle, mostly about 4°.

The succession of rocks in the peak at the north end of the mountains is given by Vaughan as follows (it begins a short distance below the great sheet of quartz pantellerite):

	Feet
Rhyolite	40
Clay or red sandstone	100
Rhyolite?	20±
Conglomerate and clays	80
Rhyolite breccia, light colors, hard at base	130
Conglomeratic sandstone and clay	50
Rhyolite breccia	50
Basalt (black)	65
Rhyolite and basalt breccia	6
Fine-grained material (tuff?)	60
Conglomerate and clay	80
Conglomerate, coarse	50
Rhyolite, massive, reddish	20
Sands and clays, some conglomerate	60
Sandstone and clays (at base)	40+

The sandstones and tuffs at the north end and extending along the abrupt west front of the Tierra Vieja Mountains are underlain by shales of Cretaceous age which include thin beds of coal of considerable extent. According to T. W. Stanton, the fossils in the strata just below the coal-bearing beds indicate Taylor age.

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The trail from San Antonio to El Paso on leaving Fort Davis swung around the foot of Livermore Peak north of Valentine and crossed Lobo Flat to the Van Horn wells, which were near the present Lobo siding. (Turn to sheet 16.)