Abstract: The Houxia depression is now an intermountain basin near Urumchi, Xinjiang. In the southern Houxia section were developed the alluvial fans in Badaowan Formation （J1b） of the earlest Jurassic, while braided river was developed in the northern section. Therefore, the Houxia area was close to the south edge of the basin in the beginning of Jurassic. The ancient current directions of early to middle Jurassic in the south and north sides of Houxia depression were all northward. We propose that Houxia and southern Junggar were joined together and constituted a unifeied basin in Jurassic, while the border between basin and mountain was close to Houxia area and differed largely from present time. There exist a few intermountain depressions within Tianshan Mountain and they all have Jurassic sediments with coal-containing strata of lower to middle Jurassic. These indicate that their sedimentary environment was very similar and swamps were developed. Based on these facts, we may conclude that there were no high mountains in Tianshan area in Jurassic and it just was hilly. To constrain the sedimentation and exhumation history of Jurassic in Houxia area, we conducted integrated research on apatite fission track dating and vitrinite reflectance （Ro） of coals. The results show that the middle Jurassic coals in Houxia area were buried at least 3 km in depth, and the apatite fission track dating records a rapid cooling event beginning at about 10 Ma, which is interpreted as exhumation of rocks because of the uplift of the mountains and foreland thrusting northward in Cenozoic caused by the India-Asia collision.