The formation was first named by Charles Whitman Cross and Ernest Howe in 1905 for exposures around Uncompahgre Gorge near Ouray, Colorado.

[3] Karl Karlstrom and coinvestigators informally raised the Uncompahgre Formation to group rank in 2017, assigning the Vallecito Conglomerate as a member.

[4] The Uncompahgre Formation is a sequence of quartzite and black phyllite some 2,500 meters (8,200 feet) in thickness.

It is exposed in a curving belt from the northwestern to northeastern Needle Mountains with outliers near Ouray and Rico, Colorado.

Dating of contact metamorphism aureoles show the formation was deformed by metamorphosis at around 1460 to 1400 Ma, concurrent with the Picuris orogeny.