Tabernacle Hill is a

butte __NOTOC__ In geomorphology, a butte () is an isolated hill with steep, often vertical sides and a small, relatively flat top; buttes are smaller landforms than mesas, plateaus, and tablelands. The word ''butte'' comes from a French word mea ...

formed by a dormant

volcano A volcano is a rupture in the crust of a planetary-mass object, such as Earth, that allows hot lava, volcanic ash, and gases to escape from a magma chamber below the surface. On Earth, volcanoes are most often found where tectonic plates are ...

in the west-central portion of

Utah Utah ( , ) is a state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. Utah is a landlocked U.S. state bordered to its east by Colorado, to its northeast by Wyoming, to its north by Idaho, to its south by Arizona, and to it ...

, United States.

Description

The butte is located in the

Sevier Desert The Sevier Desert is a large arid section of central-west Utah, United States, and is located in the southeast of the Great Basin. It is bordered by deserts north, west, and south; its east border is along the mountain range and valley sequences ...

in the Pahvant Valley southwest of Fillmore. The ring of hills that include Tabernacle Hill is approximately 1 km in diameter, and it sits somewhat off center to the southeast of a lava field approximately 5 km in diameter.

Geology

Tabernacle Hill is part of the

Black Rock Desert volcanic field The Black Rock Desert volcanic field in Millard County, Utah, is a cluster of several volcanic features of the Great Basin including Pahvant Butte, The Cinders, and Tabernacle Hill. The field's Ice Springs event was an explosive eruption follo ...

. The lava of Tabernacle Hill is

basalt Basalt (; ) is an aphanite, aphanitic (fine-grained) extrusive igneous rock formed from the rapid cooling of low-viscosity lava rich in magnesium and iron (mafic lava) exposed at or very near the planetary surface, surface of a terrestrial ...

and

tuff Tuff is a type of rock made of volcanic ash ejected from a vent during a volcanic eruption. Following ejection and deposition, the ash is lithified into a solid rock. Rock that contains greater than 75% ash is considered tuff, while rock cont ...

of late

Pleistocene The Pleistocene ( , often referred to as the ''Ice age'') is the geological Epoch (geology), epoch that lasted from about 2,580,000 to 11,700 years ago, spanning the Earth's most recent period of repeated glaciations. Before a change was fina ...

age. The basalt erupted from the vent at Tabernacle Hill into

Lake Bonneville Lake Bonneville was the largest Late Pleistocene paleolake in the Great Basin of western North America. It was a pluvial lake that formed in response to an increase in precipitation and a decrease in evaporation as a result of cooler temperature ...

when it was at the Provo level.
Quaternary geology of the Black Rock Desert, Millard County, Utah
'. Oviatt, C. G., 1991. Utah Geological Survey, Special Study 73 (23 p., pl. 1). Map Scale: 1:100,000. Tabernacle Hill lies south of

The Cinders The Cinders is a lava field including a volcanic hill named Ice Springs craters in the west-central portion of Utah, United States. It is also known as the Ice Springs Volcanic Field. Geology The Cinders are part of the Black Rock Desert volcani ...

, the youngest lava flow in Utah. The basalt of the Cinders and Tabernacle hill was first mapped by geologists

Grove Karl Gilbert Grove Karl Gilbert (May 6, 1843 – May 1, 1918), known by the abbreviated name G. K. Gilbert in academic literature, was an American geologist. Biography Gilbert was born in Rochester, New York and graduated from the University of Rochester. D ...

and

Israel Russell Israel Cook Russell, LL.D. (December 10, 1852 – May 1, 1906) was an American geologist and geographer who explored Alaska in the late 19th century. Early life and education Russell was born at Garrattsville, New York, on December 10, 1852. He r ...

in 1890 (see map below).

References

{{reflist Volcanoes of Utah Buttes of the United States Volcanic fields of the Great Basin section Landforms of Millard County, Utah Volcanic fields of Utah