Permian evaporites, red beds, and carbonates form a thick stratigraphic mosaic of cyclic regressive facies across the Texas Panhandle. Facies record deposition in inner shelf, sabkha, salt pan, saline mud flat, and desert alluvial-eolian environments. Two fundamental styles of evaporite deposition developed and created mud-rich and mud-poor sabkha systems. Extensive, shallow salt pans were typical of mud-poor systems, whereas smaller, less permanent salt pans and wide saline mud flats were characteristic of mud-rich systems. Genetic cycles show that mud-rich facies prograded southward over mud-poor facies and provided terrigenous sediments to shelf-edge and deep marine environments in the Midland Basin.

Numerous Holocene evaporite settings show resemblances to Permian evaporite systems. Comparisons are often striking and, taken as a whole, these modern settings are useful tools for interpreting sedimentary processes and environments in ancient evaporite sequences.

The distribution of clay minerals is environmentally sensitive. Both provenance and sediment-brine interactions were likely causes leading to observed distribution patterns of clay minerals.