Tag Archive for: North Horn Formation

Recently 14 UGS staff embarked on our annual Administrative Professionals’ Day field trip. This year we went to Diamond Fork Hot Springs (a.k.a. Fifth Water) north of Spanish Fork Canyon in the Uinta-Wasatch-Cache National Forest. Diamond Fork Hot Springs is located at the end of a 2.5 mile one-way hike, 700-foot elevation gain, up a scenic, forested canyon. The weather was perfect and the water pleasant and invigorating. Diamond Fork has long been hailed as the most picturesque in Utah. The hot springs emerge streamside in multiple locations below and above a couple of waterfalls. Several pools have been nicely constructed with cement and rocks (North Horn Formation). The spring water issuing from the ground is a little too hot for bathing; one seep was measured at 123˚F, so the pools just downstream from the seeps mix with the much colder stream water to produce the ideal soaking temperature, with pools ranging between 98 to 109˚F. Some of the seeps can be identified by the thermophilic (heat loving) organisms such as bacteria and archaea that color the stream cobbles a vibrant orange-red.

Click HERE for directions to Diamond Fork Hot Springs

ofr-556INTERIM GEOLOGIC MAP OF THE EPHRAIM 7.5-MINUTE QUADRANGLE, SANPETE COUNTY, UTAH
Hellmut H. Doelling, Paul A. Kuehne, and Douglas A. Sprinkel

The Ephraim quadrangle is located about 140 miles south-southeast of Salt Lake City in Sanpete County in central Utah. A diagonal line, extending NE-SW across the quadrangle, divides Sanpete Valley to the northwest, from the Wasatch Plateau. Sanpete Valley is a structural feature in which the San Pitch River flows south along its west margin. Quaternary fans form a gently sloping surface from the plateau front to the floodplain of the river.

Bedrock units are mostly of early Tertiary age. These include the (ascending) North Horn Formation (1100+ feet thick), Flagstaff Limestone (500–1000 feet thick), Colton Formation (1400+ feet thick), Green River Formation (620+ feet exposed), and the Crazy Hollow Formation (less than 50 feet exposed). Of these, the North Horn Formation may also have some Late Cretaceous strata at the base. The older three units are exposed in the Wasatch Plateau, the other two along the plateau-valley margin.

35 p., 1 pl., scale 1:24,000

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