Geologic Map of the Southeastern Vulture Mountains, West-Central Arizona

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.