The Cookes Range is surrounded by lower elevation areas of the northwest Chihuahuan Desert.

[3] South of OK Canyon is a transverse ridgeline, across the range west to east, named Rattlesnake Ridge.

Other outlying lower elevation hills occur, east and west, in the north section, as the Cookes Range merges into the lower elevations of the Mimbres Mountains section of the Black Range.

Fort Cummings (1863–1873, 1880–1886), located in the southeastern foothills of the range near Cookes Spring was established to restrict Mimbreño Apache raiding.

[2][8] The higher elevations of the range are pinon-juniper shrublands habitat which gives way to Chihuahuan desert in the foothills.