United States Department of Agriculture
Natural Resources Conservation Service		 National Water Management Center Go to Accessibility Information
Skip to Page Content
 Photo of River Bend





Sugar Creek Watershed Characteristics - Soils

SOIL FORMATION - PARENT MATERIAL

The soils in Caddo County formed mainly in material weathered from sandstone, shale, limestone, and gypsum and alluvium from those materials.

GENERAL SOIL MAP - SUGAR CREEK WATERSHED

The following graphic and text were modified from United States Department of Agriculture-Natural Resources Conservation Service (USDA-NRCS) Soil Survey of Caddo County, Oklahoma, Issued April 1973, (Out of Date publication).

Graphic of Soil Survey of Sugar Creek Watershed
Click on Image for a Larger view (41 KB)

SOIL ASSOCIATIONS

The graphic above shows the soil associations in the Sugar Creek watershed. A soil association is a landscape that has a distinctive proportional pattern of soils. It normally consists of one or more major soils and at least one minor soil, it is named for the major soils. The soils in one association may occur in another, but in a different pattern.

  1. Port-Gracemont-Pulaski Association: Deep, loamy and sandy, nearly level soils on floodplains. This association consists of about 37 percent Port soils, 20 percent of Gracemont soils, and 18 percent of Pulaski soils. The remaining 25 percent consists of minor soils. Minor soils in this association are in the Cyril, McLain, Miller, Reinach, and Yahola series. Major soils in this association are subject to flooding.

    Port soils are loamy, well drained, and moderately permeable. Port soils formed in mildly alkaline, calcareous, loamy sediment laid down by floodwater. Gracemont soils are loamy and sandy and are somewhat poorly drained. Gracemont soils have moderately rapid permeability and have a water table at a depth of less than 40 inches. Gracemont soils formed in alluvium under a cover of tall grasses. Pulaski soils are sandy and loamy, are well drained and have moderately rapid permeability. Pulaski soils formed in loamy alluvium under a cover of mid and tall grasses and trees.

  2. Pond Creek-Minco Association: Deep, loamy, nearly level to steep soils on uplands. This association consists of about 36 percent of Pond Creek soils, 34 percent of Minco soils. The remaining 30 percent consists of minor soils. Minor soils in this association are in the Dill, Lucien, Quinlan, Reinach, and Woodward series. The land type Rough broken land is also in this association.

    Pond Creek soils are nearly level and very gently sloping and have moderately slow permeability. Pond Creek soils formed under a cover of mid and tall grasses in alkaline loamy deposits. Minco soils are mostly gently sloping and sloping, but a small acreage is moderately steep or steep and is cut by drainage ways. These soils are moderately permeable. Minco soils formed under tall and mid grasses in alkaline, calcareous, loamy sediment.

  3. Pond Creek-Cobb Association: Deep and moderately deep, loamy, nearly level to sloping soils on uplands. This association consists of about 28 percent of Pond Creek soils, 26 percent of Cobb soils. The remaining 46 percent consists of minor soils. Minor soils in this association are in the Darnell, Dill, Gracemont, Grant, Lucien, Minco, Noble, Port, Pulaski, Quinlan, Reinach, Shellabarger, Woodward, and Yahola series.

    Pond Creek soils are deep and are nearly level or very gently sloping and have moderately slow permeability. Pond Creek soils formed under a cover of mid and tall grasses in alkaline loamy deposits. Cobb soils are moderately deep, are very gently sloping to sloping, and are moderately permeable. Cobb soils formed under a cover of mid and tall grasses and scattered trees.

  4. Grant-Pond Creek-Lucien Association Deep and shallow, loamy, nearly level to steep soils on uplands. This association consists of about 25 percent of Grant soils, 25 percent of Pond Creek soils, and 17 percent of Lucien soils. The remaining 33 percent consists of minor soils. Minor soils in this association are in the Acme, Cobb, Grant, Norge, Port, Pulaski, Quinlan, Wing and Woodward series.

    Grant soils are deep, very gently sloping to sloping, and are moderately permeable. Grant soils formed in loamy material from red beds under a cover of mid and tall grasses. Pond Creek soils are also deep but they are nearly level or very gently sloping and have moderately slow permeability. Pond Creek soils formed under a cover of mid and tall grasses in alkaline loamy deposits. Lucien soils are mapped only in complexes with Dill soils. They are shallow and have moderately rapid permeability. Lucien soils formed in reddish, non-calcareous, soft, fine-grained sandstone under tall, mid, and short grasses. The Dill soils, however, are moderately deep and have moderately rapid permeability. Dill soils formed under mid and tall grasses in reddish material weathered from sandstone.

  5. Dougherty-Eufaula Association Deep, sandy, very gently sloping to rolling soils on uplands. This association consists of about 39 percent of Dougherty soils, and 38 percent of Eufaula soils. The remaining 23 percent consists of minor soils. Minor soils in this association are in the Cobb, Darnell, Konawa, and Noble series.

    Dougherty soils are very gently sloping to sloping, and are moderately permeable. Dougherty soils formed in reddish, sandy or loamy sediment under oak forest and mid and tall grasses. Eufaula soils are very gently sloping to rolling and are rapidly permeable. Eufaula soils formed under mid and tall grasses and oak forest in sandy material laid down by water and wind.

  6. Noble-Darnell Association Deep and shallow, loamy, very gently sloping to hilly soils on uplands. This association consists of about 60 percent of Noble soils, and 27 percent of Darnell soils. The remaining 13 percent consists of minor soils. Minor soils in this association are in the Cobb, Doughertyl, and Eufaula series.

    Noble soils are deep and are very gently sloping to hilly. Noble soils formed under a cover of tall and mid grasses and oak forest. Darnell soils are shallow and are gently sloping to hilly. Darnell soils formed under mid grasses and oak forest in material weathered from sandstone. In both soils permeability is moderately rapid.

SEDIMENTS

Shown below is a collection of grain size analyses of material sampled at various sites of floodwater retarding structures in the watershed. Thirteen curves were averaged and is shown in red as a representative grain size - frequency curve. The median grain size - D50, the size for which 50 percent is finer or coarser, for the representative curve, is 0.063 millimeters (mm). The geometric mean grain size -Dg, for the representative curve, is 0.037 mm. The geometric mean is computed as the square root of the product of D16 and D84, (one standard deviation from the mean) of which 16 percent and 84 percent (respectively) by weight of the sediment is finer.

Grain Size Analyses of Sugar Creek
Click on Image for Larger View (19 KB)

RED ROCK CANYON STATE PARK

Photo: Red Rock Canyon State Park

Red Rock Canyon State Park is located in northeastern Caddo County, Oklahoma, approximately 50 miles west of Oklahoma City on Interstate 40 and 5 miles south on U.S. highway 281.

To contact the Park write to:

Red Rock Canyon State Park
P.O. Box 502
Hinton, Oklahoma 73047-0502
or
call 405-542-6344
or
visit their website here

The following text was modified from the Oklahoma Geological Survey, Oklahoma Geology Notes, volume 56, number 3 (June 1996), pages 88-105.

TOPOGRAPHY

Red Rock Canyon covers 300 acres, is about two and one half miles long and averages 80 feet wide at its head and 750 feet wide at its mouth. In the northern end, the canyon walls are vertical to overhanging. Downstream, near the southern end, the walls are steep, but no longer vertical. Farther downstream, as the channel cuts into the softer Marlow formation, the canyon walls lose their character altogether.

The elevation of the highest point in the Park is 1,650 feet above sea level; the lowest point is 1,450 feet above sea level. Red Rock Canyon is about 150 feet deep; locally, the vertical canyon walls and overhanging cliffs are as much as 60 feet, but generally 45 to 50 feet high.

GEOLOGY

During the Des Moines time period, many sediments were laid down into the Anadarko Basin. A Permian sea spread over the mid-continent from western Texas to the Ouachita Mountains and the Ozark uplift (Arkansas and Missouri). Marine rocks were deposited into the shallow sea, mostly evaporites like halite, gypsum, anhydrite, dolomite, and some shale. Sand was deposited in deltas on the eastern side, where rivers originating in the Ozarks and Ouachita mountains met the Permian sea. At times the sea expanded and so too did the deposition of marine rocks. Other times the sea shrank and winds re-deposited sands over the exposed evaporites. The Anadarko basin is one of the deepest sedimentary basins in the world, with as much as 40,000 feet of sedimentary rocks accumulated in it.

The Red Rock Canyon has cut into the Rush Springs Sandstone formation. About one hundred and fifty feet of the middle part of this formation is exposed in the park. The total thickness of the Rush Springs Sandstone formation in the Hinton area is around three hundred feet. This sandstone is reddish brown to orangish brown, the color results from a thin coating of oxidized iron minerals; it is mostly very fine grained to fine-grained sandstone, some layers of siltstone and thin layers of shale are also present in places. The sandstone consists of very fine to fine sand grains (0.06 - 0.25 mm in diameter), mostly of translucent quartz, but also of feldspar and some dark iron-magnesium silicate minerals. These sand grains are loosely cemented together by iron oxides, gypsum, and calcite. The cementing action is a natural process when one or more minerals crystallizes or precipitate out of the ground water that moves through the rocks. The Rush Springs Sandstone has only a small amount of natural mineral cement between the sand grains, therefore it is porous and permeable. The rock unit is an excellent ground-water aquifer. Ground water produced from wells in the area are of high quality (less than 500 milligrams of dissolved solids in one liter of water). Well yields are also high: 100 to 500 gallons per minute.

The next older formation, the Marlow Formation, softer and more easily eroded, can be seen beneath the Rush Springs Sandstone along the stream that flows through the canyon about two miles south of the park and along Sugar Creek, north of Binger.

ATTRACTIONS

Red Rock Canyon State Park is dissected by a spring-fed tributary of Sugar Creek, that flows year around to create an environment not normally associated with western Oklahoma. Impressive physical features include the vertical and overhanging canyon walls, the box-head area, the balancing rock spire, and the cross-bedded sandstone layers. The floor of the canyon is a forest of many different species of trees and plants, like the Caddo maples, that are not found anywhere else in the watershed. Many birds and animals are also found in the park at various times of the year. For more information, see the PLANTS and ANIMALS.

< Back to Sugar Creek Watershed Characteristics
< Back to Sugar Creek Fluvial Geomorphic Restoration Study Page
< Back to H&H Streambank/Wetland Restoration Technical Page