Date of Award:

5-1957

Document Type:

Thesis

Degree Name:

Master of Science (MS)

Department:

Geosciences

Department name when degree awarded

Geology

Committee

Not specified

Abstract

This report presents the results of a stratigraphic study of the Worm Creek quartzite, the basal member of the St. Charles formation of Upper Cambrian age. The member is present in the Bear River Range, the Malad Range, and the Promontory Range of Northern Utah and southeastern Idaho. The Worm Creek quartzite was differentiated as the basal unit of the St. Charles formation by Richardson (1913) and named for its occurrence in Worm Creek Canyon in the Bear River Range, Bear Lake County, Idaho.

A stratigraphic investigation of the Worm Creek quartzite, including thickness and lithologic changes, was made. Through this investigation a source area and environment of deposition was determined. In this connection, it is interesting to note that Hanson (1953) suggested that the sand may have come from central Idaho; which he thought was an island area during Upper Cambrian time; whereas Lochman (1955) postulated that the source area was to the east in the Uintah Mountains area of Utah, which she thought to be a highland during Upper Cambrian time. Noth thought that the Worm Creek quartzite represents the basal sand of a transgressive sea.

The area considered in this investigation is located in the vicinity of the Utah-Idaho-Wyoming borders, and extends from Preston, Idaho, on the north to Ogden, Utah, on the south; and from Malad City, Idaho, on the west to Laketown, Utah, on the east (Figure 1). This area lies on the boundary of the Basin and Range and Middle Rocky Mountains province, and includes art of the Bear River Range of the Middle Rocky Mountains province, and parts of the Promontory Range, the Malad Range, and Wellsville Mountain, which are all in the Basin and Range province.

In this area the Basin and Range-Middle Rocky Mountains provinces boundary is almost coincident with the Wasatch Line, which represents the flexure which defined the Cordilleran geosyncline of Paleozoic time, according to Kay (1951). This flexure approximates the transition line from the basin to the shelf area of the Cordilleran geosyncline (Figure 2).

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