These mountain units lie astride the extensive Foundation Ice Stream and Support Force Glacier which drain northward to the Ronne Ice Shelf.

[2] The Pensacola Mountains were discovered and photographed on 13 January 1956 in the course of a transcontinental nonstop plane flight by personnel of United States Navy Operation Deep Freeze I from McMurdo Sound to Weddell Sea and return.

Naval Air Station, Pensacola, Florida, in commemoration of the historic role of that establishment in training aviators of the United States Navy.

The Ordovician-Devonian Neptune Group rests unconformably on a Cambrian succession, and is overlain disconformably by the Dover Sandstone of the Beacon Supergroup.

[3] The Foundation Ice Stream flows through the western part of the range.