Digital data sets that describe aquifer characteristics of the Elk City aquifer in western Oklahoma

This data set consists of digitized water-level elevation contours for the Elk City aquifer in western Oklahoma. The aquifer covers an area of approximately 193,000 acres and supplies ground water for irrigation, domestic, and industrial purposes in Beckham, Custer, Roger Mills, and Washita Counties along the divide between the Washita and Red River basins.

The Elk City aquifer consists of the Elk City Sandstone and overlying terrace deposits, made up of clay, silt, sand and gravel, and dune sands in the eastern part and sand and gravel of the Ogallala Formation (or High Plains aquifer) in the western part of the aquifer. The Elk City aquifer is unconfined and composed of very friable sandstone, lightly cemented with clay, calcite, gypsum, or iron oxide. Most of the grains are fine-sized quartz but the grain size ranges from clay to cobble in the aquifer. The Doxey Shale underlies the Elk City aquifer and acts as a confining unit, restricting the downward movement of ground water.

Water-level elevations were measured in July 1973 and ranged from about 2,200 feet above sea level at the northwestern edge of the aquifer to about 1,700 feet above sea level at the southeastern edge of the aquifer. The water-level elevation contours were digitized from a photocopy of a paper map from a ground-water modeling thesis. The source map was published at a scale of 1:63,360.