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125 Years of Science for America - 1879 to 2004
U.S. Geological Survey
Open-File Report 2004-1062
Version 1.0

Quaternary Stratigraphy and Tectonics, and Late Prehistoric Agriculture of the Safford Basin (Gila and San Simon River Valleys), Graham County, Arizona

Friends of the Pleistocene, Rocky Mountain Cell 46th Field Conference
and
Arizona Geological Society Fall Field Trip, 2002
October 11-13, 2002

By Brenda B. Houser, Phillip A. Pearthree, Jeffry A. Homburg, and Lawrence C. Thrasher

2004

This guidebook accompanied the 46th annual meeting of the Rocky Mountain Cell of the Friends of the Pleistocene (FOP) and the 2002 Fall Field Trip of the Arizona Geological Society. The meeting and field trip were held in the Safford Basin, southeastern Arizona. The Friends of the Pleistocene is an informal gathering of Quaternary geologists, geomorphologists, and pedologists who meet annually for a field conference.

The first part of the guidebook consists of road logs with descriptions of stops covering the three days of the field trip. An overview of the geology of the Safford Basin is given in Stop 1-1. The second part of the guidebook consists of four short papers that discuss adjacent areas or that expand upon the road log descriptions of the field trip stops. The first paper by Reid and Buffler is a summary of upper Cenozoic depositional facies in the Duncan Basin, the first basin to the east of the Safford Basin. The next three papers expand upon (1) the soil study of the gridded field agricultural complex (Stop 2-3, Homburg and Sandor), (2) the vertebrate fossils of the San Simon Valley in the southeastern part of the Safford Basin (Stop 3-1, Thrasher), and (3) paleoIndian irrigation systems and settlements in Lefthand Canyon at the foot of the Pinaleno Mountains (Stop 3-2, Neely and Homburg).

This report consists of a 53-page roadlog PDF file and four Contributed papers as separate PDF files

Download the 53-page roadlog manuscript as a PDF file (23.4 MB)

Download the B.H. Reid and R.T. Buffler paper, A summary of the depositional elements and setting of the late Cenozoic Gila Group, central Duncan Basin, southeast Arizona, as a PDF file (2.1 MB)

Download the J.A. Homburg and J.A. Sandor paper, Ancient agricultural soils of a gridded field complex in the Safford Basin, as a PDF file (2.2 MB)

Download the L.C. Thrasher paper, Fossils of the San Simon Valley, Graham County, Arizona, as a PDF file (652 KB)

Download the J.A. Neely and J.A. Homburg paper, Ancient agricultural systems and settlements in Lefthand Canyon, Safford Basin, as a PDF file (2 MB)

For questions about the content of this report, contact Brenda Houser

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URL of this page: http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2004/1062/
Maintained by: Michael Diggles
Created: July 15, 2004
Last modified: July 15, 2004 (mfd)