The Glass Mountains or Gloss Mountains ( they are know by both names ) are the buttes and mesas that are between Major County in northwest Oklahoma west along US Highway 412 from Orienta south of the Cimarron River to the Permian red beds of the Blaine Escarpment of northwestern Oklahoma.
The names of the Mountains come from the Selenite crystals or what is often called Isinglass that you see on the slopes and the tops of the mesas.
The minerals found in this area are salt, copper, gypsum, sand, gravel and spar.
The mesas contain three types of gypsum selenite, massive, and satin spar. They were formed during the Permian Age about 200 million years ago. One of the epeiric inland seas that were once here left behind the massive gypsum strata , which forms the cap rock of the mesas. The shining and crumbly rock is selenite and some refer to it as isinglass. Satin spar is thicker sometimes crystalline and stained various tones of red. The highest elevation approaches 1,600 feet above sea level today.
Gypsum is the most common sulphate mineral. Gypsum is formed as an evaporative mineral, it is frequently found in alkaline lake mud, clay beds, evaporated seas, salt flats, salt springs, and caves.
The region is still active with flooding and river channel down cutting that still help create the slowly changing mesa-covered landscape.
You can log the find then email the ansewers. Thanks 1 How many mesas do you see? 2 How far down does the cap rock come? 3 What is the cap rock made of?