Title: Preliminary geologic map of the Mount Rose quadrangle, Washoe County, Nevada

Author: Nicholas H. Hinz, Alan R. Ramelli, and James E. Faulds
Year: 2014
Series: Open-File Report 14-7
Version:
Format: plate: 39 x 28 inches, color; text: 4 pages, b/w
Scale: 1:24,000

A 1:24,000-scale, preliminary geologic map of the Mount Rose 7.5-minute quadrangle in Washoe County, Nevada. This quadrangle straddles the northern Carson Range directly north of Lake Tahoe and includes much of Incline Village, the Mount Rose Highway, three north Lake Tahoe ski areas, part of the Tahoe Rim Trail, Mount Rose proper, and numerous major tributary drainages to the Truckee River and Lake Tahoe. Mapping of this quadrangle has important implications for understanding earthquake and landslide hazards in the Reno–Carson City–Lake Tahoe region.

The bedrock exposures in the quadrangle consist of Mesozoic crystalline basement and Tertiary volcanic and sedimentary rocks. The Mesozoic rocks are dominantly granitic with local metamorphic roof pendants. The Tertiary section includes a complex section of lavas, intrusions, and volcanic sedimentary rocks. Much of these volcanic and sedimentary rocks were derived from a Miocene ancestral Cascades volcanic center in the northwest quarter of this quadrangle. Principle surficial deposits include late Pliocene to modern alluvial fan and fluvial deposits, Quaternary glacial deposits, and late Quaternary mass wasting deposits. Notable deep-seated landslide complexes reside in the Whites Creek, Gray Creek, and First Creek drainages. The Tertiary section is cut by a system of north-northwest to north-northeast-striking normal and dextral-normal faults with both down-to-west and down-to-east sense of displacement, kinematically linked with a system of northeast to east-northeast-striking sinistral-normal faults. Detailed mapping of Quaternary fault scarps associated with the Incline Village fault zone benefited greatly from publicly available, high-resolution LiDAR data for the Tahoe basin.

This publication was prepared as part of the STATEMAP component of the National Cooperative Geologic Mapping Program in cooperation with the U.S. Geological Survey.