Photographer: Frank Wallace
Summary Author: Frank Wallace; Stu Witmer; Jim Foster
The photo above shows the ancient
Arbuckle Anticline in the southwest of the
Arbuckle Mountains of Oklahoma. The mountains, and the Anticline, are named for
General Matthew Arbuckle who established the first military forts in the territory in 1824. Arbuckle is one of three anticlines in the area all of which run northwest to southeast and is the most distorted part of the mountain entire range. The Arbuckle Uplift contains one of the thickest accumulations of
Paleozoic (570 to 245 million years ago) rocks in the central United States. These were subsequently
folded and faulted during Middle and Late
Pennsylvanian Epoch. One of the oldest mountain ranges in North America, the range has been gradually eroded for more than 200 million years from what once may have been in excess of 20,000 ft (6,096 m) by wind and water until only moderate sized hills remain. The highest point now in the vicinity shown is 1,415 ft (430 m) above
mean sea level. The local relief is much less --- on the order of tens to several hundred feet. Still, since the topography is so flat in this region, the
Arbuckle Anticline is an obvious landmark, and it contains deposits of a number of commercially valuable minerals resources, including oil and gas. Four million cubic yards (3,058,219 m3) of rock needed to be dynamited and hauled away when, in 1970, the final segment of
Interstate 35 in Oklahoma was cut though the
Arbuckles. Photo taken on July 14, 2010.
Photo details: Camera Maker: Canon; Camera Model: Canon EOS 5D Mark II; Focal Length: 105.0mm; Aperture: f/5.6; Exposure Time: 0.0016 s (1/640); ISO equiv: 200; Exposure Bias: none; Metering Mode: Matrix; Exposure: aperture priority (semi-auto); White Balance: Auto; Flash Fired: No; Color Space: sRGB
