The Palangana salt dome lies 60 miles west of Corpus Christi, Texas. Its stratigraphy and structural features have been determined for the most part from a drilling program conducted to determine the extent of potassium-bearing beds within the dome; 25 test wells were drilled.

The salt plug is composed of white and gray halite; anhydrite is unevenly distributed within the salt mass. Four stratigraphic units are recognized: (1) the San Diego group, (2) the Palangana group, (3) the Benavides group, and (4) the Anhydritic group. This sequence was established from well data, but the relative ages of the units could not be determined.

The lack of the rather common salt minerals carnallite, kieserite, polyhalite, and langbeinite is noteworthy. The potash beds are composed of sylvine, a mixture of halite and sylvite crystals.

The internal structural patterns of the dome are very complicated, and steeply dipping beds were found in all wells. Deviated wells were drilled at some sites to obtain more meaningful data; oriented cores were taken in these wells.

The conclusion based on the well data is that the structural features of the Palangana dome are similar to those of the Winnfield dome, Louisiana (Hoy and others, 1962), and salt domes in northwestern Germany. The geologic age of the Palangana salt could not be determined.