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'' The Chuska Mountains are an elongate range on the southwest
Colorado Plateau The Colorado Plateau, also known as the Colorado Plateau Province, is a physiographic and desert region of the Intermontane Plateaus, roughly centered on the Four Corners region of the southwestern United States. This province covers an area ...
and within the
Navajo Nation The Navajo Nation ( nv, Naabeehó Bináhásdzo), also known as Navajoland, is a Native Americans in the United States, Native American Indian reservation, reservation in the United States. It occupies portions of northeastern Arizona, northwe ...
whose highest elevations approach 10,000 feet. The range is about 80 by 15 km (50 by 10 miles). It trends north-northwest and is crossed by the state line between Arizona and New Mexico. The highlands are a dissected plateau, with an average elevation of about , and subdued topography. The highest point is
Roof Butte Roof Butte ( nv, Adáá dikʼá "Roof shaped mountain on the run") is a peak in the Chuska Mountains in Arizona, United States. Roof Butte is the highest peak of the Chuska Mountains which run in a north-northwest direction across the Arizona-New ...
(36.4601° N, 109.0929° W) at , near the northern end of the range in Arizona. Other high points include the satellite
Beautiful Mountain Beautiful Mountain ( nv, Dziłkʼi Hózhóonii) is part of the Chuska Mountains and its summit is the highest point in San Juan County, New Mexico. The mountain is about southwest of the community of Shiprock in the Four Corners region. It is ...
at and
Lukachukai Mountains The Lukachukai Mountains are a mountain range in northeast Arizona, entirely located on the Navajo Nation. The highest point of the range is an unnamed point at above sea level. While open during the winter, no road maintenance is performed an ...
at , both also near the northern end, and Matthews Peak at . The San Juan Basin borders the Chuskas on the east, and typical elevations in nearby parts of that basin are near . The eastern escarpment of the mountains is marked by slumps and landslides that extend out onto the western margin of the San Juan Basin. To the north, the Chuskas are separated from the
Carrizo Mountains The Carrizo Mountains (36°50' N, 109°7'W) is a small, mostly circular mountain range 15 to 20 km (9 to 12 miles) in diameter located on the Colorado Plateau in northeastern Arizona. The range is about southwest of the Four Corners. The hig ...
by Red Rock Valley, which is today commonly referred to as Red Valley.


Peaks

Major peaks of the Chuskas include:


Reservation

Much of the range is Navajo Nation Forest; ponderosa pine, spruce, and fir are among the important tree varieties. Trees there were cut and transported more than 75 km (about 50 miles) to the east to construct pueblos in
Chaco Culture National Historical Park Chaco Culture National Historical Park is a United States National Historical Park in the American Southwest hosting a concentration of pueblos. The park is located in northwestern New Mexico, between Albuquerque and Farmington, in a remote c ...
in the San Juan Basin as early as 974 A.D. Following a period of contentious debate, logging in the Chuskas was suspended in 1994. There has been discussion among the tribal government about resuming logging at some future time.Patrick Pynes, ''Chuska Mountains and Defiance Plateau, Navajo Nation.'' Part of the CP-LUHNA Web pages of Grahame, John D. and Thomas D. Sisk, ed., ''Canyons, cultures and environmental change: An introduction to the land-use history of the Colorado Plateau, 2002.''
The forests of the Chuska Mountains and of the Defiance Uplift receive higher rainfall than the surrounding lowlands, and these highlands typically receive regular winter snowfall. Runoff from snowmelt and seasonal thunderstorms along the crest of the Chuskas generates more than half the surface water of the
Navajo Nation The Navajo Nation ( nv, Naabeehó Bináhásdzo), also known as Navajoland, is a Native Americans in the United States, Native American Indian reservation, reservation in the United States. It occupies portions of northeastern Arizona, northwe ...
. Canyons of
Canyon de Chelly National Monument Canyon de Chelly National Monument ( ) was established on April 1, 1931, as a unit of the National Park Service. Located in northeastern Arizona, it is within the boundaries of the Navajo Nation and lies in the Four Corners region. Reflecting o ...
were cut by streams with headwaters in the Chuskas. The Chuska Mountains are sparsely populated. Nearby settlements are small, including Crystal, New Mexico, Lukachukai, Arizona, and Toadlena, New Mexico. Trading posts at Crystal and at Two Grey Hills (about 10 km east of Toadlena), are associated with distinctive patterns used in Navajo rugs. A paved road, New Mexico Highway 134, crosses the range through Narbona Pass.
Narbona Pass Narbona Pass (formerly Washington Pass) is a pass through the natural break between the Tunicha and Chuska Mountains, an elongated range on the Colorado Plateau on the Navajo Nation. A paved road, New Mexico Highway 134, crosses the range through N ...
was originally called Beesh Lichii'l Bigiizh, or Copper Pass, and was the location where Navajo warriors led by
Narbona Narbona or Hastiin Narbona (1766 – August 31, 1849) was a Navajo chief who participated in the Navajo Wars. He was killed in a confrontation with U.S. soldiers on August 31, 1849. Narbona was one of the wealthiest Navajo of his time due to th ...
decisively defeated a Mexican slaving expedition under Captain
Blas de Hinojos Blas de Hinojos was a military commander of New Mexico who was killed by a force of Navajo warriors led by Narbona in 1835. Capitan Blas de Hinojos married Maria de Jesus Trujillo. His men were poorly paid. In 1834 he received a complaint from the ...
. Later it was renamed Washington Pass, after Colonel John M. Washington, who commanded a military expedition against the Navajo.
Narbona Narbona or Hastiin Narbona (1766 – August 31, 1849) was a Navajo chief who participated in the Navajo Wars. He was killed in a confrontation with U.S. soldiers on August 31, 1849. Narbona was one of the wealthiest Navajo of his time due to th ...
was a Navajo headman killed in an encounter with Washington's troops in 1849.


Geology

The Chuska Mountains and the Defiance Uplift immediately to the southwest form one of the prominent uplifted highlands of the
Colorado Plateau The Colorado Plateau, also known as the Colorado Plateau Province, is a physiographic and desert region of the Intermontane Plateaus, roughly centered on the Four Corners region of the southwestern United States. This province covers an area ...
. The uplifted region is separated from the San Juan Basin to the east by the Defiance and associated monoclines. Relative uplift, basin subsidence, and monocline formation began in the early stages of the Laramide orogeny about 75 to 80 million years ago. Although the Chuska Mountains can be considered part of the
Defiance Uplift The Defiance Plateau, part of the geologic Defiance Uplift, is an approximately 75-mile (121 km) long, mostly north-trending plateau of Apache County, Arizona, with its east and southeast perimeter, as parts of San Juan and McKinley Counti ...
, they stand higher. They are capped by an erosional remnant of
Chuska Sandstone The Oligocene Chuska Sandstone is a geologic formation that crops out in the Chuska Mountains of northeastern Arizona and northwestern New Mexico. The formation is a remnant of a great sand sea, or erg, that once covered an area of reaching fro ...
, a unit locally more than 500 meters thick. The flat-lying Chuska Sandstone rests
unconformably An unconformity is a buried erosional or non-depositional surface separating two rock masses or strata of different ages, indicating that sediment deposition was not continuous. In general, the older layer was exposed to erosion for an interval ...
on Mesozoic rocks deformed in the Defiance monocline.
Biotite Biotite is a common group of phyllosilicate minerals within the mica group, with the approximate chemical formula . It is primarily a solid-solution series between the iron-endmember annite, and the magnesium-endmember phlogopite; more alumi ...
in layers of altered
volcanic ash Volcanic ash consists of fragments of rock, mineral crystals, and volcanic glass, created during volcanic eruptions and measuring less than 2 mm (0.079 inches) in diameter. The term volcanic ash is also often loosely used to refer ...
within the Chuska Sandstone has yielded radiometric ages of 35 and 33 million years by argon-argon dating. The Chuska Sandstone is formed of sand dune deposits, and it appears to be a remnant of a huge Oligocene sand sea, the Chuska
erg The erg is a unit of energy equal to 10−7joules (100 nJ). It originated in the Centimetre–gram–second system of units (CGS). It has the symbol ''erg''. The erg is not an SI unit. Its name is derived from (), a Greek word meaning 'work' o ...
. The erg hypothesis is consistent with major exhumation of the central Colorado Plateau in the late Oligocene and early Miocene (e.g., from about 26 to 16 million years ago). If so, then major uplift of the central Colorado Plateau may postdate the Laramide orogeny. Minette of the Navajo Volcanic Field intruded and was extruded through the Chuska Sandstone. Minette makes up the two highest points, Roof Butte and Matthews Peak. A maar complex, containing pyroclastic and extrusive minette, is exposed along New Mexico Highway 134 in Narbona Pass (Brand et al., 2008). Argon-argon dating of four minette samples at Narbona Pass yielded consistent ages of 25 million years. Very little
oil An oil is any nonpolar chemical substance that is composed primarily of hydrocarbons and is hydrophobic (does not mix with water) & lipophilic (mixes with other oils). Oils are usually flammable and surface active. Most oils are unsaturated ...
has been produced in Arizona, and much of that production has come from a minette
sill Sill may refer to: * Sill (dock), a weir at the low water mark retaining water within a dock * Sill (geology), a subhorizontal sheet intrusion of molten or solidified magma * Sill (geostatistics) * Sill (river), a river in Austria * Sill plate, ...
, the
reservoir rock A petroleum reservoir or oil and gas reservoir is a subsurface accumulation of hydrocarbons contained in porous or fractured rock formations. Such reservoirs form when kerogen (ancient plant matter) is created in surrounding rock by the presenc ...
of the Dineh-bi-Keyah field in the northwestern Chuska Mountains near Roof Butte. The sill is intruded into lower Pennsylvanian sedimentary rocks. The producing rock is both porous and fractured, and it is characterized by large poikilitic sanidine grains with inclusions of diopsidic
augite Augite is a common rock-forming pyroxene mineral with formula . The crystals are monoclinic and prismatic. Augite has two prominent cleavages, meeting at angles near 90 degrees. Characteristics Augite is a solid solution in the pyroxene grou ...
and biotite: potassium-argon dating of the biotite yielded 25.7 million years. This pulse of magmatism at about 25 million years may have been accompanied by uplift of the Defiance-Chuska high in addition to the uplift during the Laramide orogeny. Helium-rich
gas Gas is one of the four fundamental states of matter (the others being solid, liquid, and plasma). A pure gas may be made up of individual atoms (e.g. a noble gas like neon), elemental molecules made from one type of atom (e.g. oxygen), or ...
has been extracted from Devonian strata in the Dineh-bi-Keyah field. Additional economic resources have included uranium, mined from some of the Mesozoic strata, particularly from the
Morrison Formation The Morrison Formation is a distinctive sequence of Upper Jurassic sedimentary rock found in the western United States which has been the most fertile source of dinosaur fossils in North America. It is composed of mudstone, sandstone, siltstone, ...
in the Lukachukai Mountains at the northwest end of the Chuska Mountains.


References

* Lucas, Spencer G., Semken, Steven C., Berglof, William R., and Dana S. Ulmer-Scholle (editors), ''Geology of the Zuni Plateau'', New Mexico Geological Society Fifty-fourth Annual Field Conference, 424 p., 2003. * Brand, B. D., Clarke, A. B., and Semken, S., 2008, ''Eruptive conditions and depositional processes of Narbona Pass Maar volcano, Navajo volcanic field, Navajo Nation, New Mexico (USA).'' Bulletin Volcanol. * Steven M. Cather, Lisa Peters, Nelia W. Dunbar, and William C. McIntosh, ''Genetic Stratigraphy, Provenance, and New Age Constraints for the Chuska Sandstone (Upper Eocene-Lower Oligocene), New Mexico–Arizona''. in Lucas et al., cited above, pp. 397–412. * Steven M. Cather, ''The Chuska erg: Paleogeomorphic and Paleoclimatic implications of an Oligocene sand sea on the Colorado Plateau'', Four Corners Geological Society News Letter, February 2007 (accessed May, 2007), http://www.fourcornersgeologicalsociety.org/ * Steven M. Cather, Sean D. Connell, Richard M. Chamberlin, William C. McIntosh, Glen E. Jones, Andre R. Potochnik, Spencer G. Lucas, and Peggy S. Johnson, ''The Chuska erg: Paleogeomorphic and paleoclimtic implications of an Oligocene sand sea on te Colorado Plateau.'' Geological Society of America Bulletin, v. 120, pp. 3–33, 2008. * Nathan B. English, Julio L. Betancourt, Jeffrey S. Dean, and Jay Quade, "Strontium isotopes reveal distant sources of architectural timber in Chaco Canyon, New Mexico." ''Proceedings National Academy of Sciences USA'' 98, 11891–96, 2001. File:Canyon de Chelly 7-27-09 (2).JPG, View westward from upper
Canyon de Chelly Canyon de Chelly National Monument ( ) was established on April 1, 1931, as a unit of the National Park Service. Located in northeastern Arizona, it is within the boundaries of the Navajo Nation and lies in the Four Corners region. Reflecting on ...
, (from White House Ruin), with Black Mesa on the horizon.
{{Authority control Colorado Plateau Mountain ranges of Arizona Mountain ranges of New Mexico Mountain ranges of Apache County, Arizona Geography of the Navajo Nation Landforms of San Juan County, New Mexico