1st Place - Spring Storm in the Great Basin (7186595011)

The House Range is a north-south trending

mountain range A mountain range or hill range is a series of mountains or hills arranged in a line and connected by high ground. A mountain system or mountain belt is a group of mountain ranges with similarity in form, structure, and alignment that have arise ...

Millard County Millard County ( ) is a county in the U.S. state of Utah. As of the 2010 United States Census, the population was 12,503. Its county seat is Fillmore, and the largest city is Delta. History The Utah Territory legislature created the county o ...

, of west-central

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 ...

. The House Range was named in 1859 by James H. Simpson. It was named by Simpson because "...of its well-defined stratification and the resemblance of portions of its outline to domes, minarets, houses, and other structures."

Geography

The House Range is bounded by Tule Valley to the west, Whirlwind Valley and

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 ...

to the east, and trends with the Fish Springs Range to the north. The range has three notable passes:

Skull Rock Pass The skull is a bone protective cavity for the brain. The skull is composed of four types of bone i.e., cranial bones, facial bones, ear ossicles and hyoid bone. However two parts are more prominent: the cranium and the mandible. In humans, th ...

(which US Highway 6/ US Highway 50 travels through), Marjum Canyon (which the old US Highway 6 travels through), and

Sand Pass Sand is a granular material composed of finely divided mineral particles. Sand has various compositions but is defined by its grain size. Sand grains are smaller than gravel and coarser than silt. Sand can also refer to a textural class of s ...

(which the

Weiss Highway Weiss or Weiß may refer to: People * Weiss (surname), including spelling Weiß * Weiss Ferdl (1883-1949), German actor Places * Mount Weiss, Jasper National Park, Alberta, Canada * Weiss Lake, Alabama * Weiß (Sieg), a river in North Rhine-West ...

passes through). The highest point in the House Range is Swasey Peak, at . Other notable peaks include Notch Peak, a frequent climbing and base-jumping hotspot, and the very square Tatow Knob. It is also known for one of the tallest

limestone Limestone ( calcium carbonate ) is a type of carbonate sedimentary rock which is the main source of the material lime. It is composed mostly of the minerals calcite and aragonite, which are different crystal forms of . Limestone forms whe ...

cliff In geography and geology, a cliff is an area of rock which has a general angle defined by the vertical, or nearly vertical. Cliffs are formed by the processes of weathering and erosion, with the effect of gravity. Cliffs are common on co ...

s in the world, Notch Peak.

Geology

The geology of the House Range is dominated by gray Cambrian to Devonian

carbonate rock Carbonate rocks are a class of sedimentary rocks composed primarily of carbonate minerals. The two major types are limestone, which is composed of calcite or aragonite (different crystal forms of CaCO3), and dolomite rock (also known as dolosto ...

which was intruded by a pink

Jurassic The Jurassic ( ) is a geologic period and stratigraphic system that spanned from the end of the Triassic Period million years ago (Mya) to the beginning of the Cretaceous Period, approximately Mya. The Jurassic constitutes the middle period of ...

granitoid A granitoid is a generic term for a diverse category of coarse-grained igneous rocks that consist predominantly of quartz, plagioclase, and alkali feldspar. Granitoids range from plagioclase-rich tonalites to alkali-rich syenites and from quartz- ...

in the central part of the range. In the Wheeler Amphitheater, away from the intrusion, the Lagerstätte that contains the well-preserved fauna is found in the Cambrian section of the range. Evidence of

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 ...

's presence is found both in shorelines and white marls at the base of the range. The main structural component to the range is a large basin-bounding fault on the west side.

Fossils

The range is known for a fossil

Lagerstätte A Lagerstätte (, from ''Lager'' 'storage, lair' '' Stätte'' 'place'; plural ''Lagerstätten'') is a sedimentary deposit that exhibits extraordinary fossils with exceptional preservation—sometimes including preserved soft tissues. These f ...

(

Wheeler Shale The Wheeler Shale (named by Charles Walcott) is a Cambrian ( 507 Ma) fossil locality world-famous for prolific agnostid and '' Elrathia kingii'' trilobite remains (even though many areas are barren of fossils) and represents a Konzen ...

) of Cambrian age, which has an array of

Burgess Shale type fauna A number of assemblages bear fossil assemblages similar in character to that of the Burgess Shale. While many are also Burgess Shale type preservation, preserved in a similar fashion to the Burgess Shale, the term "Burgess Shale-type fauna" covers ...

, including ''

Elrathia kingii ''Elrathia'' is a genus of trilobite belonging to Ptychopariacea known from the mid-Cambrian of Laurentia (North America). ''E. kingii'' is one of the most common trilobite fossils in the USA locally found in extremely high concentrations within ...

'', a

trilobite Trilobites (; meaning "three lobes") are extinct marine arthropods that form the class Trilobita. Trilobites form one of the earliest-known groups of arthropods. The first appearance of trilobites in the fossil record defines the base of the ...

that is one of Utah's most famous

fossil A fossil (from Classical Latin , ) is any preserved remains, impression, or trace of any once-living thing from a past geological age. Examples include bones, shells, exoskeletons, stone imprints of animals or microbes, objects preserved ...

Stratigraphy

The Swasey Limestone was deposited in the '' Bathyuriscus– Elrathina''

zone Zone or The Zone may refer to: Places Climate and altitude zones * Death zone (originally the lethal zone), altitudes above a certain point where the amount of oxygen is insufficient to sustain human life for an extended time span * Frigid zone, ...

(contemporaneous with the

Burgess Shale The Burgess Shale is a fossil-bearing deposit exposed in the Canadian Rockies of British Columbia, Canada. It is famous for the exceptional preservation of the soft parts of its fossils. At old (middle Cambrian), it is one of the earliest fo ...

). This is overlain in turn by the '' Bolaspidella'' zone (uppermost Middle Cambrian)

and Marjum Formation, then the ''

Cedaria ''Cedaria'' is a small, rather flat trilobite with an oval outline, a headshield and tailshield of approximately the same size, 7 articulating segments in the middle part of the body and spines at the back edges of the headshield that reach halfl ...

'' zone (lowermost Upper Cambrian) Weeks Formation.

References

External links

{{Commons category, House Range, position=left Mountain ranges of Utah Mountain ranges of the Great Basin Mountain ranges of Millard County, Utah