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Preliminary geologic map of the Boulder City quadrangle, Clark County, Nevada [MAP AND TEXT]
Preliminary geologic map of the Boulder City quadrangle, Clark County, Nevada MAP AND TEXT
 
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Product Code: OF2016-04

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Title: Preliminary geologic map of the Boulder City quadrangle, Clark County, Nevada

Author: Seth Dee, Nicholas H. Hinz, R. Ernie Anderson, and Racheal Johnsen
Year: 2016
Series: Open-File Report 2016-04
Version:
Format: plate: 39 x 29 inches, color; text: 6 pages, some color
Scale: 1:24,000

A 1:24,000 scale preliminary geologic map of the Boulder City 7.5’ quadrangle in Clark County, Nevada. This quadrangle covers portions of the southeastern River Mountains, the northern Eldorado Mountains and straddles a segment of the drainage divide between the hydrologically closed Eldorado Valley and the through-flowing Colorado River Basin. Boulder City is located in the northern part of the quadrangle, as is the in-progress Interstate 11, Boulder City Bypass. This publication includes a combination of new mapping and integration with existing mapping by Ernie Anderson.

The bedrock exposures in the quadrangle are dominated by Tertiary plutonic, volcanic, and sedimentary rocks with lesser Proterozoic metamorphic rocks and Paleozoic sedimentary rocks. In the northern Eldorado Mountains the basal volcanic section includes the early to middle Miocene, intermediate to felsic composition Patsy Mine volcanics. The Patsy Mine volcanics are locally intruded by the composite, middle Miocene Boulder City pluton. This pluton is variably hydrothermally altered with actinolite present in altered groundmass and fracture-fill veins. Both the Boulder City pluton and the Patsy Mine volcanics are locally overlain by the middle Miocene Mount Davis volcanics which consist of a syn-extensional, bimodal sequence of lavas and tuffaceous sediments. In the southeastern River Mountains, the Tertiary strata are dominated by the middle Miocene, intermediate to felsic composition Red Mountain volcanics. These rocks are intruded by a middle Miocene granitic stock, which is probably related to widespread hydrothermal alteration of the Red Mountain volcanics. Locally overlying the Red Mountain volcanics are the less altered, intermediate to silicic, volcanics of Bootleg Wash, and unaltered Mount Davis volcanics.

The bedrock in the northern Eldorado Mountains is faulted by numerous north-striking, down-to-east and down-to-west normal faults. The northeast-striking, sinistral Hemenway Wash fault transects the northwest quarter of the quadrangle, separating the Eldorado Mountains from the River Mountains. The Hemenway Wash fault is one of the faults that makes up the >100 km-long, Lake Mead Fault System. In the northernmost Eldorado Mountains, fault strikes curve from N-S to NW and to E-W as they approach the Hemenway Wash fault zone, possibly due to oroclinal flexure. Provisional analysis of new geochronologic and geochemical data acquired in this study indicate that the plutonic and volcanic strata exposed in the southeastern River Mountains may correlate directly to strata in the northern Eldorado Mountain, providing a means to evaluate a range of possible displacements across the Hemenway Wash fault.

Surficial sediments in the quadrangle are largely alluvial fan and pediment deposits ranging from historic to Pliocene in age. Early Pleistocene to late Pliocene surficial deposits are characterized by 2+ m thick pedogenic carbonate horizons, which form resistant geomorphic surfaces on the east side of the Eldorado basin and cap many of the bedrock highlands in the Eldorado range. Fan deposits eroded from altered Boulder City plutonic rocks or from Miocene basin sediments may contain redistributed actinolite-bearing clasts. One possible fault scarp was observed in a late to middle Pleistocene aged fan. No other evidence for Quaternary faulting was recognized in the quadrangle.

This geologic map was funded in part by the USGS National Cooperative Geologic Mapping Program under STATEMAP award number G15AC00240, 2016.

© Copyright 2016 The University of Nevada, Reno. All Rights Reserved.


Original product code: OF16-4