[2] The formation consists of up to 1,430 feet (440 m) of halite with significant anhydrite, red beds, and polyhalite.

[1] The formation is found within the Delaware Basin and was deposited after the Capitan Formation, the fossil reef defining the margins of the Delaware Basin.

[1] In locations towards the margins of the Delaware Basin, the Salado Formation is composed mostly of anhydrite and gypsum resembling the Castile, and here the contact is placed at a bed of breccia thought to represent an unconformity between the two formations.

[4] The Salado Formation, and the underlying Castile Formation, form an evaporite sequence that formed in a very deep basin (over 500 meters (1,600 ft)) from increasingly saline waters.

[5] In 1935, Walter B. Lang removed the upper beds of the Castile, which include extensive halite beds in the subsurface, into the Salado Formation.