Gulf Coast of the United States Pensacola, St. Petersburg, Tampa, and increasingly, Sarasota. All are the centers of their respective metropolitan areas and contain large ports. (Baton Rouge is relatively far from the Gulf of Mexico; its port is on the Mississippi River, as is the port of New Orleans.) The Gulf Coast is made of many inlets, bays, and lagoons. The coast is also intersected by numerous rivers, the largest of which is the Mississippi River. Much of the land along the Gulf Coast is, or was, marshland. Ringing the Gulf Coast is the Gulf Coastal Plain which reaches from Southern Texas to the western
Gulf of Mexico basin center active contemporaneously in regards to geologic time. The transform boundary caused two approximately 22° counterclockwise rotations of the Yucatan Block away from the North American plate. One rotation happened prior to seafloor spreading, and the second rotation happened while the basin spread, creating the current geographical shape of the Gulf of Mexico and the current placement of the Yucatan Peninsula. The active rifting of the Late-Triassic to Mid-Jurassic, and the stratigraphy which depended strongly on that tectonic development, is followed by a relatively calm tectonic period in the Late-Jurassic. The Late-Jurassic Gulf of Mexico is characterized mostly by prolonged