The Arbuckle Mountains are an ancient mountain range in south-central Oklahoma in the United States. They lie in Murray, Carter, Pontotoc, and Johnston counties. The granite rocks of the Arbuckles date back to the Precambrian Eon some 1.3 billion years ago which were overlain by rhyolites during the Cambrian Period. The range reaches a height of 1,412 feet above sea level. According to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS): The Arbuckles contain the most diverse suite of mineral resources in Oklahoma: limestone, dolomite, glass sand, granite, sand and gravel, shale, cement, iron ore, lead, zinc, tar sands, and oil and gas; all these minerals are, or have been, produced commercially. History The Arbuckle Mountains are the oldest known formations in the United States between the Appalachian and Rocky Mountains. They contain a core of granite and gneiss that date back at least 1.4 billion years. The core is overlain by a layer of Cambrian period rhyolite that is about 525 million years old. Atop the rhyolite is about of folded and faulted limestones, dolomites, sandstones, and shales deposited in shallow seas from Late Cambrian through Pennsylvanian time (515 - 290 million years ago). They were named indirectly for Gen. Matthew Arbuckle (1778–1851), a career soldier from Virginia who was active in the Indian Territory for the last thirty years of his life. Shortly before his death at Fort Smith, Arkansas, from cholera, several detachments of troops under his command had established an outpost to protect the California road, on Wildhorse Creek in present-day Garvin County, Oklahoma. The post was then named Fort Arbuckle in his honor. Though the post was abandoned in 1870, the name had already transferred in common usage to the nearby hills. Geology Geologically the Arbuckles are an elongate anticline structure with an orientation or strike of west-northwest. The core of the structure consists of Proterozoic extrusive and intrusive rocks, the Colbert rhyolite porphyry and the Tishomingo granite (age dated at 1374 Ma), which are overlain by the Arbuckle Group, the Simpson Group, Viola Group, and the Hunton Group. Uplift, faulting, and folding occurred during the Wichita Orogeny, followed by erosion. Hydrology and karst features Underlying the Arbuckle Mountains is the Arbuckle-Simpson aquifer, housing freshwater which emanates at springs to provide the base flows of the Blue River and Honey Creek, which flows over Turner Falls south of Davis. As a result of the karst topography, standing water