Gulf Coast of the United States Gulf Coast of the United States The Gulf Coast of the United States is the coastline along the Southern United States where they meet the Gulf of Mexico. The coastal states that have a shoreline on the Gulf of Mexico are Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida, and these are known as the "Gulf States". The economy of the Gulf Coast area is dominated by industries related to energy, petrochemicals, fishing, aerospace, agriculture, and tourism. The large cities of the region are (from west to east) McAllen, Brownsville, Corpus Christi, Houston, Galveston, Beaumont, Lafayette, Baton Rouge, New Orleans, Biloxi, Mobile,
Gulf of Mexico basin Mexico which penetrated the Late-Triassic and Early-Jurassic strata, filling the extensional graben features. The Gulf of Mexico basin red beds are specifically named the Eagle Mills formation, located directly beneath the salt, evaporite and marine sediments deposited during the Jurassic, and often found with the diabase dikes and basalt flows mentioned above. Basement rocks in the northeastern region of the Gulf of Mexico basin are fragments of the African plate which remained behind during the breakup of Pangaea and date back to the late Precambrian through the Cambrian. It is atop these Precambrian plate fragments that the mainly carbonate and