Between the Black Forest and the Neckar, Ries and Danube rivers, the Schwäbische Alb (Swabian Highlands) rises up, 136 miles (220 km) long and up to 25 miles (40 km), as the highest plateau of the "Schichtstufenland" (stratified terraced landscape) in southwestern Germany. Before its steep northwestern rim lie foothills (the "Zeugenberge" - Witness Mountains) to which Mount Hohenneuffen also belongs.
200 million years ago an ocean also extended into the region of what are the Alb today. Numerous fossils bear witness to this so-called Jurassic sea. When the Alps folded 65 million years ago, the deposited layers north of the Alps also rose and shifted. The threshold of the northern rim (Albtrauf) on which Mount Hohenneuffen stands is the clear remains of this complex geological development.
Diverse karst features (dry valleys, dolinas (sinkholes), karst springs and caves) are characteristic of the Schwäbische Alb. They are partially the result of the activity of the so-called Swabian Volcano, which lead to volcanic gas explosions 20 million years ago. Over time the Alb limestone was dissolved by the carbonic acid contained in rain. Stalactite caverns can be found all around Mount Neuffen, and in summer springs running dry.
In 1853 the poet Eduard Mörike created a literary monument to the countryside of the Schwäbische Alb. In his "Stuttgarter Hutzelmännlein" (Hutzelmännlein = small brown elf that does helpful tasks for people at night), the shoemaker Seppe wanders from Stuttgart over the Alb to Ulm. "With great joy he soon saw the Alb from the Bempflinger Höhe (Bempflingen Heights) stretched out like a wondrous blue wall. (...) and Hohen-Neuffen, the windows of which he saw twinkling brightly from afar. In his estimation, there was probably not much of anything more magnificent to be found in all of Germany than these mountains, in the summer, and this vast, blessed country":