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 shallow-marine siliciclastics; eventually sediments grade into the Cretaceous carbonates, evaporites, and chalks. More recently, the Laramide Orogeny and consequential uplift of the Rocky Mountains, which led to increased sediments flooding the gulf, is responsible for the rapid loading and burial of the Wilcox Formation (pg 43), which is one of the deepwater Gulf of Mexico formations currently being exploited for hydrocarbons. This rapid loading is also responsible for the first salt flows from beneath the basin-margin region towards the continental slope. Gulf of Mexico basin The formation of the Gulf of Mexico, an oceanic rift basin located between North America