Description:
The Vulture Mountains are situated in west-central Arizona,
between the Big Horn and Harquahala Mountains on the west, and
the Wickenburg Mountains on the east. Although a range of low
relief, the Vulture Mountains are sufficiently a really extensive
in that they cover all or part of eight individual 7.5 minute
quadrangles. The geologic map of the southeastern Vulture
Mountains (Fig. 1), a product of this study, covers the northern
part of the Wickenburg SW 7.5 minute quadrangle. Most of the few
precipitous bluffs and ridges of the range are in the eastern
quarter of the range, and have roughly 200 m of relief. Detailed
geologic mapping in the Vulture Mountains has been limited to the
northeastern part (Grubensky and others, 1987). Geochronologic
studies of rocks in the central and northern Vulture Mountains
(Rehrig and others, 1980) provide the only available K-Ar dates
of any of the rocks in the range. This report is considered
preliminary and is part of an ongoing project to map and study
the entire Vulture Mountains.
The Vulture Mountains are important for three fundamental
reasons. The first is that the Vulture Mountains are, at
present, largely unmapped. Second, the Vulture Mountains contain
an excellent record of the mid-Tertiary structural and volcanic
history of the region, which is of general interest to the
geologic community....study included 1:24,000-scale topographic maps.