Limestone is one of the most important nonfuel mineral resources in Texas. Annual production exceeds $30 million; value added in the manufacture of such products as cement and lime amounts to about $100 million annually. Lower Cretaceous limestone is the source of more than 40 percent of the State's total production of limestone and is utilized chiefly as crushed stone (aggregate and constructional stone), sources of raw materials for lime and portland cement, chemical and industrial process stone, agricultural limestone, fluxstone, and dimension stone.

This report treats the sedimentary petrology and history of the Haymond Formation, a monotonous sequence of interbedded sandstone and shale that has a maximum preserved thickness of 4,300 feet. The upper part of the formation includes massive coarse sandstone beds and a complex of pebbly mudstones and slumped beds that encase exotic and erratic rock fragments up to 130 feet long. The Haymond is part of a 12,000-foot sequence of flysch that was deposited during late Paleozoic time in the Marathon geosyncline, a part of the Ouachita geosyncline located in Trans-Pecos Texas.

Based on need for convenient, small-scale cartographic units, the basal Cretaceous rocks in Texas from Red River to Burnet County and on the Callahan Divide are herein divided into three distinctive lithologic sequences.