New Mexico Geological Society
Fall Field Conference Guidebook - 51
Southwest Passage-A trip through the Phanerozoic

Timothy F. Lawton, Nancy J. McMillan and Virginia T. McLemore, eds, 2000, 282 pages.

Welcome to the Southwest Passage, the arid steppes and mountains of southwestern New Mexico's Basin-and-Range Province. Dry and windy, high and lonesome: this region's descriptors do not elicit comfort, yet the area has been a key crossroads as long as we have knowledge of human transit. The first day route traverses the Pyramid Mountains near Lordsburg to visit the Lordsburg mining district, ash-flow tuffs in the range, and hydrothermal sites associated with the western range-bounding fault. The second day features the Little Hatchet Mountains, with an overview of the Eureka mining district in the northern part of the range, an assessment of recent discoveries and advances in the Mesozoic stratigraphy and igneous history, and a stop at a skarn deposit formed at an intrusive contact of Tertiary granite and Paleozoic carbonate rocks. The third day route visists Cambrian alkalic basement exposures and low angle faults of controversial nature in the Florida Mountains. There is also a supplemental roadlog from Lordsburg to Redrock, Ash Creek and Jack Creek in the northern Burro Mountains to examine Proterozoic rocks.

Papers from this guidebook are available for download from the NMGS website.

Best Guidebook Award, 2001 — Geoscience Information Society