Ground-water resources of the Holbrook region, Arizona

The Holbrook region, as described in this report, occupies a portion of the Colorado Plateau of northeastern Arizona and is roughly bounded by meridians 109° and 111° west and parallels 34° and 35°30' north.It includes most of the drainage area of the Little Colorado River in Arizona, exclusive of the Navajo country.Semiarid conditions prevail except in the mountainous areas to the south.Dry farming has been unsuccessful; irrigation is practiced to a very slight extent, its chief restrictions being the lack of water of proper quality and quantity.Cattle and sheep grazing have been conducted successfully and are the chief industries.Sufficient well-water supplies may be developed for present herds, but the region as a whole seems not adapted to further expansion of the grazing industry under present conditions of vegetative cover and its use.Mineral and other resources appear to be meager.There is some timber.The Petrified Forest, Painted Desert, and Crater Mound are natural features that attract visitors, and the White Mountain country has become a summer resort area.The sedimentary rocks exposed within the region range from the Supai formation, of Permian age, to Recent gravel.Extrusive lava flows and cinder beds of Tertiary or Quaternary age mantle large tracts in the southeastern and western parts of the region.A great number of small dikes and plugs of intrusive igneous rock occur in the north-central part, and others are probably present beneath the lava flows, but they have little effect on the occurrence of ground water.The principal aquifers of the region are the Coconino sandstone, the lava flows, and the Recent sand and gravel deposits along major streams.The Coconino sandstone yields abundant supplies of fresh water to many wells in the western and central parts of the region.Salt water is reported to occur in the Coconino at Winslow and at the Petrified Forest National Monument, although there appears to be doubt as to its source.The contact of the extrusive igneous rocks with underlying impervious sedimentary beds is an important spring horizon, and a few wells obtain water at the same horizon.Many wells are situated in the alluvial flats along most of the major streams.The water obtained from these wells is not of good quality but is usable.A large number of wells and springs in Apache County obtain relatively small but useful supplies of water at the contact of unconsolidated Tertiary sands with underlying Chinle or Cretaceous formations.'Warm springs, which yield large quantities of highly mineralized water, issue from deposits of travertine along the Little Colorado River near Hunt and south of St. Johns.The rocks of the Holbrook region dip in general toward the north and northeast, away from the high mountainous area on the south.Local folds interrupt the gentle regional dip, and a few faults are present.Some of the folds, such as the Holbrook dome, are important factors in causing artesian conditions in certain areas where other factors are favorable.Details of the structure are only imper-19 20 CONTRIBUTIONS TO HYDROLOGY, 19 3 8 fectly known, and it is difficult to predict the presence or absence of artesian con~ ditions in advance of drilling.Local structural features associated with the Holbrook dome are among the more interesting geologic phenomena of the region.They include open tension cracks near the crest of the anticline, tepeelike ridges due to compression in synclinal areas, and numerous sinks, whose origin is here tentatively ascribed to block faulting rather than to solution of underlying beds.Samples of water from 118 wells and springs were analyzed in the laboratory of the Geological Survey.The results of the analyses, which are included in this report, show that the total dissolved solids in the waters range from 80 to 6,197 parts per million.Waters from Recent alluvial materials, the Moenkopi formation, and the Chinle formation are commonly high in dissolved mineral matter.The best waters come in large part from the base of the lava flows or of the Tertiary sands and from the Coconino sandstone.Data on nearly all the springs and wells in the region are presented in the text, in tables, and on maps, and suggestions relative to future water supply develop• ments are included.Winslow, which contains about 15 percent of the inhabitants of the region, obtains water for domestic use from a reservoir on Clear Creek.Joseph City, Snowflake, Taylor, St. Johns, and Hunt use impounded surface waters for irrigation.Domestic and public supplies of water for these and other towns are obtained in large part from wells or springs.The Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway uses ground water from wells except at Winslow, where impounded surface waters are used.CONTRIBUTIONS TO HYDROLOGY, 1938 Samples of water were collected from 118 wells and springs.An effort was made to have these samples representative of the different aquifers and of types of water supply.The samples were analyzed in the laboratory of the Geological Survey in Washington, D. C., and the results are tabulated on pages 88-90.Geologic and hydrologic maps.-Thesurface geology of the region covered by this report is shown on plate 2. Except for certain minor changes in details of extent of formations, this map is taken from the geologic map of Arizona, edition of 1924, prepared by the Arizona Bureau of Mines in cooperation with the Federal Geological Survey.The chief modifications given on the present map consist of more accurate boundaries for the Tertiary sands, extension of the Moenkopi formation up the Little Colorado River to St. Johns, and elimination of the Shinarump conglomerate from the Petrified Forest National Monument area.The location of the wells described in the text and listed in the tables is shown on plate 3. The wells are numbered consecutively.Wells in Coconino County are numbered from 1 to 28 and 393, 394, 432, and 438, those in Navajo County from 30 to 127, and those in Apache County from 130 to 313.In each county the township subdivisions are arranged from west to east as in following the lines of the printed page.Within the townships the United States landsurvey system of numbering sections has been followed in arranging the tables.Efforts were made to locate wells by quarter sections, but those whose exact locations are unknown are plotted in the centers of the sections on the map.Three county maps were generously made available by the county officials-the 1931 revision of the map of Coconino County, by J. B. Wright, county engineer, which is on the scale of 1 inch to 4 miles; the map of Navajo County, made by K. L. B

Archaeology · Geography · Archaeology and Natural History · Water Quality and Resources Studies · Geology

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• Geology and ground water in the central part of Apache County, Arizona

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