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The process that shaped the Wichita Mountains is called "folding and faulting" or "uplift." Some of the outcrops visible today formed deep within the earth almost 500 million years ago.

The Wichita Mountains rose about 300 million years ago during the late Pennsylvanian period (see html or text table). During the Permian period, the Wichitas were islands in an ocean that covered much of the present-day Great Plains.

Marine fossils from the Paleozoic era (and some earlier and later periods) are common in Southwest Oklahoma. The next occasion represented in the fossil record, the Ice Age, is much nearer our own time. As late as ten thousand years ago, mammoths roamed the temperate grasslands of Southwest Oklahoma.

The modern environment of Southwest Oklahoma is a "mixed-grass prairie." Historically, the Cross Timbers that once divided the state marked a transition from the tall grass prairie. "Prairie" typically means tall grass, while "Plains" means short grass. "Museum of the Western Prairie" then signifies being located at the western edge of the prairie and the eastern edge of the Plains.

Last reviewed: 2004/08/07