The land is marked by lush, montane forests and steep-sided valleys and hollows, as deep as 120 metres (390 ft) in places, separated by conical hills and ridges.

During the 16th and 17th centuries, maroons—the escapee former slaves (and their descendants) of the island's Spanish and British-operated sugarcane plantations—used this rugged terrain to their benefit, carving out an existence on their own, away from the violent slavers and colonial powers of the lowlands.

[2] When the Leeward Maroons signed a peace treaty in 1740, they assisted the colonial authorities in pursuing runaway slaves who sought refuge in the Cockpit Country.

[3] At the start of the nineteenth century, Cuffee established a community of runaway slaves in the Cockpit Country, and resisted attempts by the colonial authorities and the Maroons of Accompong Town to rout them.

On the north, the main defining feature is the fault-based "Escarpment", a long ridge that extends from Flagstaff in the west, through Windsor in the centre, to Campbells and the start of the Barbecue Bottom Road (B10).

It was so named because Spanish horsemen venturing into this region of hostile escaped slaves were said to have ridden two to a mount, one rider facing to the rear to keep a precautionary watch against ambush.

Where the ridges between sinkholes in the plateau area have dissolved, flat-bottomed basins or valleys have been formed that are filled with terra rosa soils, some of the most productive on the island.

As of April 2013, public consultations have begun on the definition of the boundary proposed in a recently released study by Mitchell, Miller, Ganapathy, and Spence of the University of the West Indies (UWI).