Tertiary strata of the Texas Gulf Coast comprise a number of terrigenous depositional wedges, some of which thicken abruptly at their downdip ends as a result of contemporaneous movement of growth faults and underlying salt.

The Washita Group in North-Central Texas and southeastern Oklahoma consists of up to 114 m of intercalated shale, limestone, and sandstone that accumulated in the shallow, epicontinental sea of the East Texas Basin. The Ouachita-Arbuckle Mountains to the north supplied terrigenous sediments, and the Central Texas platform to the south was a site of carbonate deposition leeward of the shelf margin of the Stuart City trend. Eleven lithofacies of the Washita were deposited within a repeatedly subsiding shelf basin that received an intermittent supply of terrigenous sediment.

Papers in this volume were presented at the Gulf Coast Lignite Conference held in Austin, Texas, June 1976.
Papers were edited, in some cases extensively, and subjectively grouped by discipline, paralleling that of their presentation at the Conference.

Lignite occurs in three Eocene stratigraphic units--the Wilcox Group, Yegua Formation, and Jackson Group--and in three ancient depositional systems-fluvial, deltaic, and strandplain/lagoonal. Sand-body geometry and lignite occurrence in these systems are revealed by regional sand-percent, net-sand, maximum-sand, and lignite-isopleth maps made from 3,050 electric and induction logs.

The land surface in the Texas Coastal Zone is interlaced with active and potentially active surface faults. They are subtle features which are difficult to identify until they have caused damage to manmade structures. To date (1978), significant damage has resulted. Faults intercept 2 airports, interstate highways at 11 different locations, and railroad tracks at 28 locations. Faults also pass through 11 residential communities. More than 200 houses in these communities in Harris and Galveston Counties show structural damage because of faulting.