[3] The range is located largely in the Cibola National Forest,[3] lying south of Interstate 40 from southeast of Gallup to southwest of Grants.

The Zuñi Mountains sit on the Continental Divide and form part of the southeastern edge of the Colorado Plateau.

[4] The Zuñi Mountains form a northwest–southeast trending uplift with a core of Precambrian granite and metamorphic rocks, surrounded by Late Permian and Triassic to Jurassic strata.

A total of 20,000 ft (6,000 m) of previously overlying layers of Cretaceous and older sedimentary rocks have been eroded away from the highest part of the range, but appear in outlying areas to the west and to the northeast in San Juan Basin.

[5] The current physiographic expression of the range is the result of uplift during the Cretaceous–Paleogene Laramide Orogeny approximately 80 to 40 million years ago.