The Blaine Escarpment begins to rise even beyond our north border. In its bounty it gives us the Great Salt Plains, the Nescatunga and the Cimarron, Alabaster Caverns, Cedar Canyon with the natural bridge, Chimney Rock and its fantastic arena, the Glass Mountains, the Gyp Hills, Roman Nose Park, Red Rock Canyon, The Tonkawa Hills.Who named the Glass Mountains? Nobody knows. The name first appeared on a map issued by the federal land office in 1873. Two years later a map from this same source called them the Gloss Mountains, precipitating a conflict, which continues to this day. And it inspired a probable legend. The 1873 map resulted from a survey led by an engineer named T.H. Barrett. Historiographer James Cloud is of the opinion that the draftsman who copied the 1873 map misread the 'a' and thought it was an 'o'. There is a persistent legend that a member of that first exploring party was British, or Bostonian. This Britisher (or Bostonian) awakening early one morning in the survey camp east of the mesas, saw the sun glinting on the selenite. He exclaimed in his long eastern patois, 'Why, they look just like glaws!' Thence, the party’s cartographer simply wrote down what he thought he had heard. It was a passing error. Glass was the right word for their name, and so it remains. These mesas of the Blaine Escarpment contain three types of gypsum; satin spar, massive, and selenite. Formed 200 million years ago during the Permian Age, an inland sea with its shores in the Arbuckle and Wichita Mountains deposited the massive gypsum strata, which forms the caprock of each technicolor mesa. The selenite is shining and crumbly as isinglass. Satin spar is thicker, sometimes crystalline, sometimes stained to various tones of red. Over the centuries the Permian seas became dry. The marine water evaporated and wind and river began its eroding work. Each lone peak is still gradually changing its shape.From the viewpoint of that hawk soaring there in the updraft they spread—south to north—farther even than the hawk’s long vision can perceive. More than two thousand square miles. Glittering mesas jeweled with decorations set in the brightest hues of blood red, blue, milky white, verdant herb and mesquite green, or golden yellow. The range of blues is widest, azurite, ultramarine, turquoise, beryl, all the variety that clay and sky can make, and sparkling in the sun glint, glittering with selenite diamonds set in rough earth.