The Gloss Mountains rise abruptly from the flat plains of northwest Oklahoma about 25 miles north of Watonga — flat-topped red mesas capped with selenite gypsum crystals that genuinely glitter in sunlight, giving the buttes an otherworldly quality on a clear morning. The state park is small, with a limited trail network, but you can scramble up to the mesa tops for views across the surrounding wheat and cattle country.
The formations are geologically unusual — the red Permian sandstone and shale of the surrounding plains has been protected by the hard gypsum caps from millions of years of erosion, leaving the mesas stranded above the plain like islands. The Cherokee Outlet Land Run of 1893 crossed this country, and the landscape would have looked essentially the same to the settlers. A worthwhile half-day trip from Watonga.