Classical interpretations of orogeny were based on relatively imprecise biostratigraphic and isotopic age determinations that necessitated grouping apparently related features that may in reality have been greatly diachronous. Isotopic age techniques now have the precision required to resolve the timing of orogenic events on a scale much smaller than that of entire mountain belts. Forty-five new 40Ar/39Ar ages from the Klamath Mountains illuminate the deformation, metamorphishm, magmatism, and sedimentation involved in the Jurassic construction of that orogen, leading to a new level of understanding regarding how preserved orogenic features relate to ancient plate tectonic processes. The new geochronologic relationships show that many Jurassic units of the Klamath Mountains had 200 Ma or older volcanoplutonic basement. Subsequent formation of a large ~170 Ma arc was followed by contractional collapse of the arc. Collision with a spreading ridge may have led to large-scale NW-SE extension in the central and northern Klamaths from 167 to ~155 Ma, co-incident with the crystallization of voluminous plutonic and volcanic suites. Marked cooling of a large region of the central Klamath Mountains to below ~350 ¿C at ~150 Ma may have occurred as the igneous belt was extinguished by subduction of colder material at deeper structural levels. These data demonstrate that the Klamath Mountains-and perhaps other similar orogens-were constructed during areally and temporally variant episodes of contraction, extension, and magmatism that do not fit classical definitions of orogeny. ¿ American Geophysical Union 1995