Everything about The Raton Basin totally explained
The
Raton Basin is a
geologic structural basin in southern
Colorado and northern
New Mexico. It takes its name from
Raton Pass and the town of
Raton, New Mexico. In extent, the basin is approximately 50 miles east-west, and 90 miles north-south, in
Huerfano and
Las Animas Counties, Colorado, and
Colfax County, New Mexico.
Although structurally a basin, the Raton Basin forms a topographic high dissected by eastward-flowing streams such as the
Purgatoire River. The basin forms the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, immediately east of the
Sangre de Cristo Range.
The sedimentary beds that form the basin are of
Paleozoic,
Mesozoic and
Tertiary age. In the eastern part of the basin, the sedimentary section is capped by flows of
basalt of
Miocene age. The basin is highly asymmetrical, the beds
dipping more steeply on the west side than the east.
The sedimentary rocks of the basin are extensively intruded by
igneous plugs,
dikes and
sills of
Eocene to
Oligocene age. Two large
granitic intrusives near the center of the basin form
East Spanish Peak and
West Spanish Peak. Dikes of
felsic to intermediate composition radiate outward from East and West Spanish Peaks. Dikes of
mafic and
ultramafic composition trend east-northeast to west-southwest across the basin. Basaltic sills tend to intrude along the
coal beds.
The site of the Raton Basin was a coastal plain at the end of Cretaceous and beginning of
Tertiary time, and has a well-preserved sequence of rocks spanning the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary. For this reason, the Raton Basin had been studied for evidence of the
iridium anomaly thought to be evidence for a large meteor impact at the end of the
Cretaceous that's in turn thought to have caused the
Cretaceous–Tertiary extinction event. The boundary is represented in the basin by a 1-cm thick
tonstein clay layer which has been found to contain anomalously high concentrations of iridium. The boundary clay layer is accessible to the public at
Trinidad Lake State Park, among other places in the basin.
Natural Resources
Coal
Bituminous coal mines opened in the Raton Basin in 1873.
Walsenburg, Colorado,
Trinidad, Colorado and
Raton, New Mexico became coal-mining towns. The coal deposits are in the Vermejo Formation (
Cretaceous) and overlying Raton Formation (Cretaceous and
Paleocene). Most of the mines were underground room-and-pillar, although in later years some mines in New Mexico used longwall mining. Some strip mining was done in New Mexico.
Much of the mining on the Colorado side of the basin supplied the steel mills at
Pueblo, Colorado. Production through 1975 was 326 million short tons (295 million tonnes). There are currently no active coal mines in the basin, although the New Elk coal mine is being permitted to reopen.
Oil and gas
A number of wells have been drilled over the years seeking conventional oil and natural gas, but none has been produced in economic quantities in the basin. In April 2008, Pioneer Natural Resources announced that they were developing natural gas reserves in the Cretaceous
Pierre Shale on their leasehold in the Raton Basin.
Coalbed methane
Coals in the Raton Basin were long known to be "gassy." During development of the Morely mine in the early part of the 20th century, two gas relief wells were drilled into the coal, as a safety measure to drain off gas ahead of mining.
The first wells seeking to produce
coalbed methane were drilled in the Raton Basin in 1982. Thousands of wells have successfully extracted
coalbed methane from the
Vermejo Formation and
Raton Formation coals. The productive coalbed methane area now covers the central part of the basin, and straddles the
Colorado-
New Mexico state line.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Raton Basin'.
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