The Hueco Mountains are a range of mountains that rise in southern
Otero County, New Mexico and extend south into
Texas
Texas (, ; Spanish: ''Texas'', ''Tejas'') is a state in the South Central region of the United States. At 268,596 square miles (695,662 km2), and with more than 29.1 million residents in 2020, it is the second-largest U.S. state by ...
, generally along the
El Paso–
Hudspeth county
A county is a geographic region of a country used for administrative or other purposes Chambers Dictionary, L. Brookes (ed.), 2005, Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd, Edinburgh in certain modern nations. The term is derived from the Old French ...
line just east of the city of
El Paso, Texas
El Paso (; "the pass") is a city in and the seat of El Paso County in the western corner of the U.S. state of Texas. The 2020 population of the city from the U.S. Census Bureau was 678,815, making it the 23rd-largest city in the U.S., the ...
. The highest point of the range is the
Cerro Alto Mountain in Hudspeth County.
The
Hueco Bolson
The Waco (also spelled ' and ') of the Wichita people are a Southern Plains Native American tribe that inhabited northeastern Texas. Today, they are enrolled members of the federally recognized Wichita and Affiliated Tribes, headquartered in Ana ...
, a down-dropped area with an elevation of above sea level, with sedimentary fill nearly thick, lies between the Hueco and
Franklin Mountains. Shallow, stony soils in the Hueco Mountains support oak, juniper, and some mesquite. The mountains were part of the
Rocky Mountain trend, forced upward as part of the
Laramide
The Laramide orogeny was a time period of mountain building in western North America, which started in the Late Cretaceous, 70 to 80 million years ago, and ended 35 to 55 million years ago. The exact duration and ages of beginning and end of the o ...
mountain-building period during the late
Cretaceous
The Cretaceous ( ) is a geological period that lasted from about 145 to 66 million years ago (Mya). It is the third and final period of the Mesozoic Era, as well as the longest. At around 79 million years, it is the longest geological period of ...
, 60 to 70 million years ago.
The word ''hueco'' is Spanish for hollow, gap, or hole.
References
Mountain ranges of New Mexico
Mountain ranges of Texas
Geography of El Paso, Texas
Landforms of Hudspeth County, Texas
Mountain ranges of Otero County, New Mexico
Mountain ranges of El Paso County, Texas
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