The Llano Uplift is a geologically ancient, low geologic dome that is about 90 miles (140 km) in diameter and located mostly in Llano, Mason, San Saba, Gillespie, and Blanco counties, Texas. It consists of an island-like exposure of Precambrian igneous and metamorphic rocks surrounded by outcrops of Paleozoic and Cretaceous sedimentary strata. At their widest, the exposed Precambrian rocks extend about 65 miles (105 km) westward from the valley of the Colorado River and beneath a broad, gentle topographic basin drained by the Llano River. The subdued topographic basin is underlain by Precambrian rocks and bordered by a discontinuous rim of flat-topped hills. These hills are the dissected edge of the Edwards Plateau, which consist of overlying Cretaceous sedimentary strata. Within this basin and along its margin are down-faulted blocks and erosional remnants of Paleozoic strata which form prominent hills.
The Uinta Mountains are an east-west trending mountain range in northeastern Utah extending a short distance into northwest Colorado and slightly into southwestern Wyoming in the United States. As a subrange of the Rocky Mountains, they are unusual for being the highest range in the contiguous United States running east to west, and lie approximately 100 miles (160 km) east of Salt Lake City. The range has peaks ranging from 11,000 to 13,528 feet, with the highest point being Kings Peak, also the highest point in Utah. The Mirror Lake Highway crosses the western half of the Uintas on its way to Wyoming. Utah State Route 44 crosses the east end of the Uintas between Vernal and Manila.
The geology of the Grand Teton area consists of some of the oldest rocks and one of the youngest mountain ranges in North America. The Teton Range, partly located in Grand Teton National Park, started to grow some 9 million years ago. An older feature, Jackson Hole, is a basin that sits aside the range.
Castle Mountain is a mountain located within Banff National Park in the Canadian Rockies, approximately halfway between Banff and Lake Louise. It is the easternmost mountain of the Main Ranges in the Bow Valley and sits astride the Castle Mountain Fault which has thrust older sedimentary and metamorphic rocks forming the upper part of the mountain over the younger rocks forming its base. The mountain's castellated, or castle-like, appearance is a result of erosive processes acting at different rates on the peak's alternating layers of softer shale and harder limestone, dolomite and quartzite.
The Laramie Plains is an arid highland at an elevation of approx. 8,000 feet (2,400 m) in south central Wyoming in the United States. The plains extend along the upper basin of the Laramie River on the east side of the Medicine Bow Range. The city of Laramie is the largest community in the valley. The plains are separated from the Great Plains to the east by the Laramie Mountains, a spur of the Front Range that extends northward from Larimer County, Colorado west of Cheyenne. The high altitude of the region makes for a cold climate and a relatively short growing season. Unsuitable to most cultivation, the plains have historically been used for livestock raising, primarily of sheep and cattle.
The Deseret Peak Wilderness is located in the Stansbury Mountains of Tooele County, Utah, United States near the towns of Tooele and Grantsville, not far from the Great Salt Lake. It is part of the Wasatch-Cache National Forest. This semi-arid wilderness is part of the Great Basin ecosystem. Elevations range from about 6,000 feet to the top of Deseret Peak's limestone escarpment at 11,031 feet (3,362 m). In this high country, with barren Skull Valley to the west, you'll find some springs and intermittent creeks, despite the general dryness of the area.
Lake Point is a city on the eastern edge of northern Tooele County, Utah, United States. It is located 17 miles southwest of Salt Lake City International Airport and 11 miles north of Tooele, Utah. At its location on the south shore of the Great Salt Lake, the city is served by Interstate 80 and Utah State Route 36.
The Raft River Mountains are a mountain range in northern Box Elder County, Utah, United States. The mountains are located in the Raft River Division of the Minidoka Ranger District of the Sawtooth National Forest. The highest point is Bull Mountain, near the Dunn Benchmark, at 9,925 ft (3,025 m), and the ghost town of Yost is on the north-central slopes. Tributaries of the Raft River drain the northern slopes of the range to the Snake River then Columbia River and Pacific Ocean, while the southern slopes drain to the Great Salt Lake.
The Overland Trail was a stagecoach and wagon trail in the American West during the 19th century. While portions of the route had been used by explorers and trappers since the 1820s, the Overland Trail was most heavily used in the 1860s as a route alternative to the Oregon, California, and Mormon trails through central Wyoming. The Overland Trail was famously used by the Overland Stage Company owned by Ben Holladay to run mail and passengers to Salt Lake City, Utah, via stagecoaches in the early 1860s. Starting from Atchison, Kansas, the trail descended into Colorado before looping back up to southern Wyoming and rejoining the Oregon Trail at Fort Bridger. The stage line operated until 1869 when the completion of the First transcontinental railroad eliminated the need for mail service via stagecoach.
Howard Stansbury was a major in the U.S. Army Corps of Topographical Engineers. One of his most notable achievements was leading a two-year expedition (1849–1851) to survey the Great Salt Lake and its surroundings. The expedition report entitled Exploration and survey of the valley of the Great Salt Lake of Utah, including a reconnaissance of a new route through the Rocky Mountains was published in 1852 providing the first serious scientific exploration of the flora and fauna of the Great Salt Lake Valley as well as a favorable impression of the members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, who had settled there beginning in 1847.
The Stansbury Mountains are a 28-mile (45 km) long mountain range located in eastern Tooele County, Utah. It is named for U.S. Army Major Howard Stansbury, a topographical engineer, who led an expedition that surveyed the region.
The Tonto Group is a name for an assemblage of related sedimentary strata, collectively known by geologists as a Group, that comprises the basal sequence Paleozoic strata exposed in the sides of the Grand Canyon. As currently defined, the Tonto groups consists of the Sixtymile Formation, Tapeats Sandstone, Bright Angel Shale, Muav Limestone, and Frenchman Mountain Dolostone. Historically, it included only the Tapeats Sandstone, Bright Angel Shale, and Muav Limestone. Because these units are defined by lithology and three of them interfinger and intergrade laterally, they lack the simple layer cake geology as they are typically portrayed as having and geological mapping of them is complicated.
Except where underlain by the Sixtymile Formation, the Tapeats Sandstone is the Cambrian geologic formation that is the basal geologic unit of the Tonto Group. Typically, it is also the basal geologic formation of the Phanerozoic strata exposed in the Grand Canyon, Arizona, and parts of northern Arizona, central Arizona, southeast California, southern Nevada, and southeast Utah. The Tapeats Sandstone is about 70 m (230 ft) thick, at its maximum. The lower and middle sandstone beds of the Tapeats Sandstone are well-cemented, resistant to erosion, and form brownish, vertical cliffs that rise above the underlying Precambrian strata outcropping within Granite Gorge. They form the edge of the Tonto Platform. The upper beds of the Tapeats Sandstone form the surface of the Tonto Platform. The overlying soft shales and siltstones of the Bright Angel Shale underlie drab-greenish slopes that rise from the Tonto Platform to cliffs formed by limestones of the Muav Limestone and dolomites of the Frenchman Mountain Dolostone.
The Bass Formation, also known as the Bass Limestone, is a Mesoproterozoic rock formation that outcrops in the eastern Grand Canyon, Coconino County, Arizona. The Bass Formation erodes as either cliffs or stair-stepped cliffs. In the case of the stair-stepped topography, resistant dolomite layers form risers and argillite layers form steep treads. In general, the Bass Formation in the Grand Canyon region and associated strata of the Unkar Group-rocks dip northeast (10°–30°) toward normal faults that dip 60+° toward the southwest. This can be seen at the Palisades fault in the eastern part of the main Unkar Group outcrop area. In addition, thick, prominent, and dark-colored basaltic sills intrude across the Bass Formation.
The geology of the Isle of Skye in Scotland is highly varied and the island's landscape reflects changes in the underlying nature of the rocks. A wide range of rock types are exposed on the island, sedimentary, metamorphic and igneous, ranging in age from the Archaean through to the Quaternary.
The Bright Angel Shale is one of five geological formations that comprise the Cambrian Tonto Group. It and the other formations of the Tonto Group outcrop in the Grand Canyon, Arizona, and parts of northern Arizona, central Arizona, southeast California, southern Nevada, and southeast Utah. The Bright Angel Shale consists of locally fossiliferous, green and red-brown, micaceous, fissile shale (mudstone) and siltstone with local, thicker beds of brown to tan sandstone and limestone. It ranges in thickness from 57 to 450 ft. Typically, its thin-bedded shales and sandstones are interbedded in cm-scale cycles. They also exhibit abundant sedimentary structures that include current, oscillation, and interference ripples. The Bright Angel Shale also gradually grades downward into the underlying Tapeats Sandstone. It also complexly interfingers with the overlying Muav Limestone. These characters make the upper and lower contacts of the Bright Angel Shale often difficult to define. Typically, its thin-bedded shales and sandstones erode into green and red-brown slopes that rise from the Tonto Platform up to cliffs formed by limestones of the overlying Muav Limestone and dolomites of the Frenchman Mountain Dolostone.
The geology of Morocco formed beginning up to two billion years ago, in the Paleoproterozoic and potentially even earlier. It was affected by the Pan-African orogeny, although the later Hercynian orogeny produced fewer changes and left the Maseta Domain, a large area of remnant Paleozoic massifs. During the Paleozoic, extensive sedimentary deposits preserved marine fossils. Throughout the Mesozoic, the rifting apart of Pangaea to form the Atlantic Ocean created basins and fault blocks, which were blanketed in terrestrial and marine sediments—particularly as a major marine transgression flooded much of the region. In the Cenozoic, a microcontinent covered in sedimentary rocks from the Triassic and Cretaceous collided with northern Morocco, forming the Rif region. Morocco has extensive phosphate and salt reserves, as well as resources such as lead, zinc, copper and silver.
The geology of Ohio formed beginning more than one billion years ago in the Proterozoic eon of the Precambrian. The igneous and metamorphic crystalline basement rock is poorly understood except through deep boreholes and does not outcrop at the surface. The basement rock is divided between the Grenville Province and Superior Province. When the Grenville Province crust collided with Proto-North America, it launched the Grenville orogeny, a major mountain building event. The Grenville mountains eroded, filling in rift basins and Ohio was flooded and periodically exposed as dry land throughout the Paleozoic. In addition to marine carbonates such as limestone and dolomite, large deposits of shale and sandstone formed as subsequent mountain building events such as the Taconic orogeny and Acadian orogeny led to additional sediment deposition. Ohio transitioned to dryland conditions in the Pennsylvanian, forming large coal swamps and the region has been dryland ever since. Until the Pleistocene glaciations erased these features, the landscape was cut with deep stream valleys, which scoured away hundreds of meters of rock leaving little trace of geologic history in the Mesozoic and Cenozoic.
The geology of Utah, in the western United States, includes rocks formed at the edge of the proto-North American continent during the Precambrian. A shallow marine sedimentary environment covered the region for much of the Paleozoic and Mesozoic, followed by dryland conditions, volcanism, and the formation of the basin and range terrain in the Cenozoic.
The Frenchman Mountain Dolostone is the uppermost and youngest of five Cambrian geologic formations that comprise the Tonto Group. It consists of beds of mottled white to gray dolomite often separated by thin seams of shale, especially in its lower part. In the Grand Canyon, this formation forms vertical cliffs that thicken westward between the top of the Muav Limestone and the base of either the Devonian Temple Butte Formation or Mississippian Redwall Limestone. Because of unidentified trace fossils and lack of datable body fossils, the Frenchman Mountain Dolostone exact age is uncertain. Within the Grand Canyon, its thickness varies between 61 and 137 m. West into the Lake Mead region, it thickens abbr=on and is 370 m (1,210 ft) thick at Frenchman Mountain near Las Vegas, Nevada.
