The Red Hills, also referred to as Gypsum Hills, is the name of a physiographic region located mostly in

Clark Clark is an English language surname, ultimately derived from the Latin with historical links to England, Scotland, and Ireland ''clericus'' meaning "scribe", "secretary" or a scholar within a religious order, referring to someone who was educat ...

Comanche The Comanche or Nʉmʉnʉʉ ( com, Nʉmʉnʉʉ, "the people") are a Native American tribe from the Southern Plains of the present-day United States. Comanche people today belong to the federally recognized Comanche Nation, headquartered in La ...

and Barber counties in southern and central Kansas. This undulating terrain of red-tinted sediments, a product of the underlying geology, does not fit the conventional description of the

Great Plains The Great Plains (french: Grandes Plaines), sometimes simply "the Plains", is a broad expanse of flatland in North America. It is located west of the Mississippi River and east of the Rocky Mountains, much of it covered in prairie, steppe, an ...

landscape of Kansas. The

red bed Red beds (or redbeds) are sedimentary rocks, typically consisting of sandstone, siltstone, and shale, that are predominantly red in color due to the presence of ferric oxides. Frequently, these red-colored sedimentary strata locally contain th ...

sediments of the Red Hills were deposited in an arid continental closed basin that formed within the Pangaean supercontinent during the Permian Period. Water often flooded this basin forming ephemeral

playa Playa (plural playas) may refer to: Landforms * Endorheic basin, also known as a sink, alkali flat or sabkha, a desert basin with no outlet which periodically fills with water to form a temporary lake * Dry lake, often called a ''playa'' in the so ...

s of somewhat acidic waters.Benison, K.C. and Goldstein, R.H. 2001. Evaporites and siliciclastics of the Permian Nippewalla Group of Kansas, USA: a case for non-marine deposition in saline lakes and saline pans. Sedimentology 48(1):165-188. The shallow playas were intermittently flooded then dried leaving a mixture of lacustrine sediments and gypsum evaporites. The red color derives from the oxidation of iron contained within the deposits. The region is also known as the Gypsum Hills, because of the large natural deposits of gypsum in this area. The dissolution of underlying gypsum beds has led to the formation of sinkholes which are common features within the Red Hills region.

Big Basin Big Basin Redwoods State Park is a state park in the U.S. state of California, located in Santa Cruz County, about northwest of Santa Cruz. The park contains almost all of the Waddell Creek watershed, which was formed by the seismic uplif ...

and Little Basin are two well-known sinkholes in western Clark County. The Red Hills have scenic vistas and some small steep canyons. High points include Mount Nebo (), Mount Jesus () and Mount Lookout (), in Clark County, Kansas.

References

External links

Red Hills Focus Area-U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service
Regions of Kansas Geology of Kansas {{BarberCountyKS-geo-stub

See also

References

External links