Sedimentary successions of the prehistoric Santa Cruz River, Tucson, Arizona

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Author
Haynes, C.V., Jr.
Huckell, B.B.
Issue Date
1986
Keywords
Arizona Geological Survey Open File Reports
Santa Cruz River
Tucson
Pima County
Arizona
topography
geomorphology
paleogeology
sequential deposition
sedimentary succession

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Citation
Haynes, C.V., Jr., Huckell, B.B., 1986, Sedimentary successions of the prehistoric Santa Cruz River, Tucson, Arizona. Arizona Geological Survey Open File Report, OFR-86-15, 44 p.
Description
Like most river valleys, that of the Santa Cruz River contains a complex history of erosion, deposition, and stability spanning over a million years of geologic time. Unraveling this history is a laborious and often difficult process of mapping, analyzing, and correlating exposures of the sediments deposited by the river. Today this effort is aided by the fact that the river is a typical arroyo or entrenched drainage with vertical banks that expose the layers of sediment deposited in the past. Like pages in a book, these strata reveal the history of sequential deposition, but unlike a new book many of the pages are either missing (cut out by erosion) or mangled (altered by various processes). The Santa Cruz through Tucson has not always been a steep-walled, normally dry, ephemeral river. Less than a century ago, near "A" Mountain, it flowed intermittently in a relatively narrow and shallow channel through a broad, flat, grassy valley with numerous mesquite thickets and occasional cottonwood groves (Bryan, 1922). In some reaches the channel became indistinct and gave way to wet meadows or cienegas that were commonly exploited for water by constructing earthen dams. The stored water was then used for either irrigation or mill power. Another technique of acquiring irrigation water was to excavate a trench at headcuts to intersect the shallow water table and direct the outflow to fields downstream by ditch or pipe (Betancourt, 1978; Betancourt and Turner, in press). ( 44 pages)
URI
http://hdl.handle.net/10150/629006
Additional Links
https://library.azgs.arizona.edu/
Language
en
Series/Report no.
OFR-86-15
Rights
Arizona Geological Survey. All rights reserved.
Collection Information
Documents in the AZGS Document Repository collection are made available by the Arizona Geological Survey (AZGS) and the University Libraries at the University of Arizona. For more information about items in this collection, please contact azgs-info@email.arizona.edu.
North Bounding Coordinate
32.322
South Bounding Coordinate
32.0616
West Bounding Coordinate
-111.077
East Bounding Coordinate
-110.941
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