The aim of this study was to find an explanation for the remarkable morphology of the central part of the S254-S258 star forming complex. We performed a deep Chandra X-ray observation of the S254-S258 region in order to efficiently discriminate young stars (with and without circumstellar matter) from the numerous older field stars in the area. We detected 364 X-ray point sources in a 17'x17' field. This X-ray catalog provides, for the first time, a complete sample of all young stars in the region down to about 0.5M_{sun}_.