The lower Paleogene Wilcox Group crops out around the northern edge of the Gulf of Mexico Basin and is a major coal-bearing unit and a primary oil and gas producer in the lower Paleogene section of the Gulf Coast region. The outcrop distribution of the Wilcox Group and other coal-bearing strata of the Gulf Coast region was compiled as part of a U.S. Geological Survey National Coal Assessment (Warwick and others, 1997). A structure contour map of the top of the Wilcox Group was constructed as part of a U.S. Geological Survey Petroleum Systems and Geologic Assessment of Oil and Gas of the northern Gulf of Mexico coastal region (Warwick, 2017). This surface, mainly constructed using data from oil and gas wells, depicts the overall configuration of the Wilcox Group near the outcrop belt, within the Mississippi Embayment, and near the present-day coastline where the Wilcox Group crosses over the Lower Cretaceous shelf margin in the subsurface. The structure contour map of the top of the Wilcox Group was used to help define the thermal maturity of a specific source-rock interval as part of the oil and gas assessment. This digital data release captures in digital form the mapped outcrop distribution and structural configuration of the Wilcox Group from the previously published U.S. Geological Survey assessment-related studies of the Gulf Coast region (Warwick and others, 1997; Warwick, 2017). Both the geologic map polygons and structure contours were digitized and attributed as GIS data sets so that these data could be used in digital form as part of U.S. Geological Survey and other studies of the region.