El Capitan (Texas)
El Capitan | |
---|---|
Highest point | |
Elevation | 8,064 ft (2,458 m)[1] |
Prominence | 285 ft (87 m)[2] |
Parent peak | Guadalupe Peak |
Coordinates | 31°52′38″N 104°51′29″W / 31.87722°N 104.85806°W[1] |
Geography | |
Culberson County, Texas, U.S. | |
Parent range | Guadalupe Mountains |
Topo map | Guadalupe Peak |
Geology | |
Age of rock | Permian |
Climbing | |
Easiest route | Hike |
El Capitan (Spanish: El Capitán) is a peak in Culberson County, Texas, located within Guadalupe Mountains National Park.[2] The 10th-highest peak in Texas at 8,085 ft (2,464 m), El Capitan is part of the Guadalupe Mountains, an exposed portion of a Permian period reef uplifted and exposed by tectonic activity during the late Cretaceous period.[3] The southern terminus of the Guadalupe Mountains, El Capitan looms over U.S. 62/180, where its imposing height and stark outline have made it one of the iconic images of the Trans-Pecos to generations of travelers.
Geology
El Capitan is the southernmost peak of the Guadalupe escarpment, an ancient limestone reef that forms the present-day Guadalupe Mountains. These mountains are an exposed portion of the Capitan Reef Barrier, a 350-mile long reef constructed primarily from calcareous sponges, encrusting algae, such as stromatolites, and lime-rich mud directly from the ocean. This reef surrounded much of the Delaware Sea, an inland ocean that covered parts of modern southern New Mexico and Trans-Pecos Texas in the Permian period (about 290 million years ago). Near the end of the late Permian period, in the Ochoan epoch, the outlet that allowed sea water to enter the inland waters began to silt over, occasionally closing the inland sea from its source. Mineral-rich and cut off from replenishment, the inland sea began to evaporate into layers of alternating gray anhydrite/gypsum, brown calcite, and halite, which formed the Castile Formation. As salt concentrations increased, laminated halite, anhydrite, sylvite, and polyhalite formed the Salado Formation, which eventually covered and grew beyond the lower Castile Formation.[4]
By the end of the Ochoan, these deposits had filled the roughly 1,800-ft-deep basin and covered the reef with dry land. Red silt and sand deposited by rivers crossing these new lands eventually formed the dolomitic Rustler Formation, and the Dewey Lake Formation, burying the reef even deeper. The Capitan Reef stayed buried for over 150 million years, until the late Cretaceous period of the Mesozoic era (80 million years ago), when tectonic activity associated with the Laramide Orogeny caused a significant uplift in the area and created a major fault line, the Border Fault, in the area west of the Delaware Basin. Exposing the Guadalupe Mountains area of the reef, the impact of this tectonic event can be clearly seen in the difference in height between the towering El Capitan and the adjacent salt flat graben, vertically driven 1,000 feet apart by the uplift. Once exposed, the natural forces of wind and rain slowly stripped away the softer sediments, further uncovering the ancient reef and revealing the sheer limestone walls of the Guadalupe Mountains.[5]
Human history
Deep in the Chihuahuan Desert, the area around El Capitan is composed of rugged mountains and wind-swept salt flats. As a result, most of the Native American presence in the vicinity was centered around 3 miles southeast of El Capitan in the area now called Pine Springs. An oasis of springs, seeps, and vegetation, this area exhibits evidence (mescal dumps, petroglyphs, artifacts, etc.) of human occupation for several centuries. Most recently, the area was a seasonal home to bands of the
While the occasional Spanish expedition, such as that of
During this period, El Capitan also bore witness to the El Paso Salt War, a violent struggle between Mexican-American residents and Anglo businessmen over access to the salt flats extending west from the base of the mountain. Long known to the Apache, the salt flats were first identified by Europeans in 1692 by the expedition of Diego de Vargas. Quickly becoming an important local resource, generations of Mexicans, and later, Mexican-Americans, braved the hot, dangerous, four-day trail from San Elizario on the Rio Grande to the Hueco Mountains and then east towards El Capitan to fill their wagons with the precious salt.[9] This all changed in the late 1840s, when the region began to have a larger Anglo presence. While Mexican law and tradition had held the salt flats as communal property, American tradition considered them unclaimed lands, which could be claimed by any citizen and purchased as private property. By the 1870s, attempts by local businessmen to claim the salt flats were being met with violent opposition by local residents, for whom the free salt was an important adjunct to the regional economy of farming and ranching. The conflict came to a head in December 1877, when Charles Howard, who had attempted to claim the salt flats, and two colleagues were murdered by an angry mob. This quickly led to widespread violence against local Mexican-American families, leading many to flee south of the Rio Grande. By the time the dust had settled, the salt flats had been claimed and local residents were forced to pay for the salt that for centuries had been free.
By the early decades of the 20th century, an all-weather road had been constructed between El Paso and
Access
As previously noted, El Capitan is located within the boundaries of Guadalupe Mountains National Park, a fee-area located on U.S. Highway 62/180 between Carlsbad and El Paso. The southern terminus of the Guadalupe range, El Capitan is guarded by cliffs on three sides, and those faces are rarely climbed due to the unstable condition of the rock and the sheer nature of the peak. While no trail to the summit has been developed, hikers can climb up to the top of El Capitan by first climbing to near the summit of Guadalupe Peak on the developed 4.5-mile Guadalupe Peak Trail, scrambling down to the south onto the Guadalupe Peak-El Capitan saddle, and then hiking up the back of El Capitan to the summit.
References
- ^ a b "El Capitan". Geographic Names Information System. United States Geological Survey, United States Department of the Interior.
- ^ a b "El Capitan, Texas". Peakbagger.com. Retrieved 2011-08-08.
- ^ "Mountains of Texas - TSLAC". www.tsl.texas.gov.
- ^ "Capitan Reef Complex Structure and Stratigraphy" (PDF). Texas Water Development Board.
- ^ "Geologic Formations". Guadalupe Mountains National Park. U.S. National Park Service.
- ^ "Mescalero Apaches - Guadalupe Mountains National Park (U.S. National Park Service)". www.nps.gov.
- ^ CAUBLE, SMITH, JULIA (15 June 2010). "POPE'S CROSSING". tshaonline.org.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) - ^ DONELL, KOHOUT, MARTIN (15 June 2010). "PINE SPRINGS, TX". tshaonline.org.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) - ^ "The El Paso Salt War - Guadalupe Mountains National Park". U.S. National Park Service.
- ^ "Archived copy" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2017-12-01. Retrieved 2017-06-06.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link) - ^ Fabry, J. K. (1990). Guadalupe Mountains National Park: An Administrative History. Santa Fe, N.M.: Division of History, Southwest Cultural Resources Center, Southwest Region, National Park Service, Dept. of the Interior.