Geology and hydrology of the Wichita Falls, Texas area
The exposed strata at the surface in and around Wichita Falls are the products of one ancient period of deposition with a modest amount of recent and modern alteration.
In all cases, the strata are products of terrigenous (non-marine) environments dominated by fluvial depositional and erosional systems (rivers and streams).
The rocks found in and around Wichita Falls result from southwesterly-flowing Permian streams that deposited sands in channels and silts and clays on the surrounding floodplains.
Exposures of sediments indicate that northeast-flowing streams locally deposited silts, clays, sands, and some gravels on the Permian rocks.
In the Permian geologic period, North-Central Texas was a part of the western coastal zone of equatorial Pangea, a super-continental land mass.
[3] The Petrolia Formation (of the Late Wolfcampian-Leonardian systems) dominates the exposed Permian strata in Wichita falls, as mapped by the 1987 Texas Atlas of Geology.
[4] Gravels are granule-to-cobble size, with clasts of angular to well-rounded quartzite, quartz, and chert from distal sources and lesser fragments of local strata.
[4] The region is largely underlain with shallowly west-dipping strata, but a significant uplifted block is found in the subsurface immediately north of Wichita Falls.
The uplifts offset Pennsylvanian and older strata in the subsurface and are thought to be contemporaneous with the Ouachita and Ancestral Rocky Orogenies.
These Pennsylvanian orogenies resulted from the closure of the Iapetus ocean as the Gondwana and Laurentia continents collided to form Pangea.
[5] Groundwater withdrawals are limited to individual property owners and do not feed into the municipal supply for the city of Wichita Falls.
However, the nearby city of Burkburnett, located 15 miles north of (and down hydraulic gradient from) Wichita Falls relies in part on this aquifer for municipal supply.
In the southern part of the city, the distribution and nature of the aquifer is consistent with one hosted by Pleistocene and/or Holocene fluvial channel deposits.
[6] Lake Kemp is the location where the Internet viral video titled "Failed Dock Jump Attempt" was filmed.
[10] This video was featured on G4tv's Attack of the Show[11] Truscott Brine Lake was completed in 1987 by the Army Corps of Engineers, Tulsa District.
[12] Authorized in 1974, and completed in 1987, a 5-foot tall inflatable collection dam was constructed across the South Wichita River near Guthrie, Texas.
[12] An additional low-water inflatable dam has been installed on the Middle Fork of the Wichita River, but a pipeline to Truscott Lake has not yet been completed.
The most recently built of the region's large reservoirs, it was impounded in 1965 following a prolonged legal battle and the eventual relocation of the residents (living and deceased) of Halsell, Texas.
