Guide to the Permian Reef Geology Trail, McKittrick Canyon, Guadalupe Mountains National Park, West Texas

"The Permian Reef Geology Trail in the mouth of McKittrick Canyon, Guadalupe Mountains National Park traverses 2,000 vertical ft of upper Guadalupian facies, through one of the world's finest examples of a rimmed carbonate platform margin. The present-day topography approximates that formed by the Captain reef along the edge of the Delaware Basin. The U.S. National Park Service constructed the Permian Reef Geology Trail in the early 1980's to provide better access to the depositional facies and diagenetic features of this shelf margin.

This trail guide provides detailed documentation of the carbonate facies encountered along the Permian Reef Geology Trail. Carbonate facies descriptions are most useful when they are integrated into the local and regional stratigraphic framework and into a shelf-to-basin depositional model, as was done herein."

Citation:
Bebout, D. G., and Kerans, Charles, editors, 1993, Guide to the Permian Reef Geology Trail, McKittrick Canyon, Guadalupe Mountains National Park, West Texas: The University of Texas at Austin, Bureau of Economic Geology, Guidebook 26, 48 p.